Food: Hypersensitive; Hyposensitive or somewhere in the middle?

My mother was not a bad cook, she just had very strong opinions and was inflexible. 

She hated ready made food and insisted on cooking almost everything from scratch .

She worked part time in a restaurant but hated eating in restaurants. 

In my childhood we often went on day trips with our local social club.  My mother insisted we never buy food or drink during the trips, we must always bring everything from home.  This included bottles of dilute cold fruit juice. A couple of thermos flasks of hot tea.  Cups to drink both hot drinks and cold drinks.  masses and masses of sandwiches,  Home made damp cotton cloths wrapped in plastic paper to wipe our hands and faces.  And we had to carry all this heavy stuff around with us.

She insisted tea bags had to be square / rectangular.  I once bought round tea bags.  Whole packet of 80 went straight in the bin.  She said just looking at them made her want to vomit.

She insisted milk used in coffee had to be boiled.  Not cold, warm or hot.  But BOILED. She heated milk in a milk pan and as it started to boil it rose to the top and just before it overflowed grabbed it to put into the coffee.  Once many years ago I made her a coffee without boiling the milk.  It went straight down the sink.  And she never tired in telling people that I was useless and unable to even make coffee.  Twenty years later I was accosted in the street by a relative and told that I was pathetic,  because she had heard that I a grown man was unable to even make a cup of coffee. 

Many years later I discovered that I started school three months late.  One of the reasons my mother gave me for not sending me to school was to protect me from other people's cooking.

My mother was a terrible cook! She had set meals for every day of the week and she cooked them all badly! If anything she taught me how not to cook! I taught myself to cook from scratch with the use of a few good cookbooks that I purchased when I moved out of home aged 18.

Crisps are good, though I've been doing the whole 'clean eating' thing since before Christmas so no crisps at the moment But when I do eat crisps my favourites are prawn cocktail crisps or chilli heatwave doritos, nice and spicy niknaks are good too! I eat spicy food more for the flavour than for heat, I'm just getting into a Moroccan Tagine phase at the moment! I only drink herbal tea. Ginger, lemon and manuka honey is my current favourite, I like the kick from the ginger. Coffee is good, the stronger the better, I like Turkish coffee too. I'll eat most meat and fish/seafood but not liver and I'm not keen on kidneys either, any entrails basically! I rarely eat on my own because I have children. I hate watching my 5 year old daughter eat as she eats with her mouth open, I'm trying to train her out of it but that just makes it funnier for her to do it just to wind me up, kids!

Please do describe your late mother's habits and how it affected your life, it would be interesting to read about.

My food habits are many.  I consider them relatively sensible.  Unlike my late mother who was inflexible and absolute in her belief in what was the correct way to cook and what she/we as a family were allowed to eat.

My habits:

• Crisps, I'm an addict,  as a child I was salt and vinegar. Now I can't stand the flavour. Now it's cheese and onion and beef and onion.  I love seebrook ribbed crisps.
• Curries and chicken tikka.  I'm almost an addict. First one at university was the best.  Others have been a let down, it's like chasing the dragon, never getting the same high again.  Gradually I've gone for hotter flavours, madras, jalfrezi, vindaloo.  Although the very very hot latest ones are too much and they burn my mouth.
• Tea,  I'm very particular and only drink selective brands.  Others taste like dishwater . So I only drink tea at home. When I'm out somewhere I always choose coffee because I can drink any coffee.(except the very very strong Turkish coffee which is like treacle).
• I love chicken, pork, cod, haddock I can tolerate beef and lamb,  I hate prawns, salmon, liver and kidneys.
• I usually eat alone.
• I hate watching other people eat.  It makes me feel sick.

Perhaps I should later describe my mother's habits and how it affected my life.

I tried the goats cheese and chive omelette this morning, because I sometimes do an omelette on a Saturday so I thought I’d see if I liked it and if I could get it past my kids. I liked it. My 5 year old is now a goats cheese convert! She loved the goats cheese and loved the omelette, although she did spend a good 5 minutes picking the chives out before eating it ♀️Litlun though was having none of it! The omelette didn’t even make it as far as the sniff test! She sat and looked at it for a couple of minutes then got down from the table. My attempts at passing her pieces of it were met by her promptly pushing my hand away. She also refused to eat a new cereal and then her usual cereal in a different bowl so she eventually ate her usual Cheerios in her usual bowl. I’m guessing the massive meltdown that she had after all that was probably due to me messing about with her breakfast. I think I’d best just stick to her usual Cheerios in her usual purple bowl from now on! 

I just use Aldi's medium egg noodles cooked in vegetable or chicken stock, As a baseline I'd add frozen peas and sweetcorn and soy sauce but if there was leftover chicken or prawns or anything else that was suitable, in the fridge, then I'd add that too. It's my go-to quick and easy lunch when I haven't got much time. No I haven't ever tasted Pho, it seems a bit like a noodle version of special fried rice?

nexus9 said:

Needless to say, no full English here..

All I can eat fried for breakfast is one egg on a sandwich, a full English would put me straight back to bed or I'd be sick. I haven't ate pork since '95 so I can't even really remember what one tastes like!

Kitsune said:

Home made pot noodles are the best! I'm going to have to make some up next week!

Yeah, Odon and Ramen noodles always serve me well! I always put leftover chicken in certain ones. Packet noodles can be jazzed up nicely!

Have you ever tasted Pho? It's a big bowl of broth and noodles, and you drop stuff in as you go along. You put the extras on the side. The more you drop in the thicker and tastier the broth gets. Best thing about it is, you can start off bland, but everyone can add what they like to theirs. It's good because everyone basically ends up with theirs the way they want it. 

well you've got to be sure that you've got enough gravy, right?

That's bad that you had such bad experience with school dinners but good that they eventually decided to be reasonable about it. Shame it took them so long though!

I can understand the bad association with the chicken balls! Port is a bad thing to develop an aversion to though, I love a bit of port at Christmas time!

I also remember my eldest daughter has an aversion to apple and blackcurrant juice for the same reason, association between drinking it and having a stomach upset during the following night. These stomach bugs have a lot to answer for!

I don't think that I've ever tried the one Ton soups in a packet. What different flavours do they do?

Home made pot noodles are the best! I'm going to have to make some up next week!

I could imagine that fizzy drinks wouldn't be good for silent reflux. Limes are good, not as good as lemons though :-)

1. I just find Pepsi way to gassy anyway. I don't like fizzy drinks that much and the doctor warned me they are not good if may have silent reflux. Limes are fine

I have heard the noodles you get on shops can be very difficult to digest. I did like those one Ton soups in s packet you can get though

Needless to say, no full English here..

I used to eat the cat's biscuits when I was a child, they taste quite nice! I also used to eat egg shells, my excuse is that it's a good source of calcium!

Be careful that you don't get food poisoning from eating raw meat!

worcester sauce is good, I haven't had any for a while! I like strong flavours but I wouldn't go as far as drinking the above straight from the bottle/jar! Are there any foods that you don't like? Anchovies are good to add flavour to potato gratin.

We've still got Easter Eggs sitting in the kitchen cupboard. Nothing to do with stomach bugs, they just haven't been eaten yet! Good thing that you didn't generalise your aversion to all chocolate!!

Thanks. I'm quite interested in the science behind the food allergies. I'll have a look at this later.

I put gravy on my gravy. Just to make sure!