What Food do You Detest?

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Tripe

What is that?  Abe.  It sounds awful.

I think it's an animal part.  I don't think I would like it either.  I prefer common food.  I don't like raw fish either, not even giviche.  I don't like slimy things though I love okra cooked without it being slimy.

Alice, Tripe is animal intestines.  An experience I'll never forget is when I was working in Greece and it was late in the evening.  I was hungry and my boss said, "Do you like soup?"  I said "yes, right now I think it would satisfy my hunger."  He said "I know just the place and they have a great soup."
When we drove to the restaurant and parked, the smell was nauseous.  I guessed the smell was coming from trash cans.  When we entered the restaurant the smell hit me with full impact.  My appetite was gone and didn't think I could eat anything.  George, my friend, guided me to a table and said, "Do you like your soup thick or thin?"  I said, "I like it thick."
He placed the order.  I watched a cook with a large wooden ladle stirring something in a very large pot.  Then he would lift the substance out of the water and it looked like he was stirring some wash, like a bed sheet.  He then took some of the substance out of the pot and placed it on a cutting board and began to chop it up into small pieces.
When the soup was placed in front of me the smell reminded me of the insides of a chicken – the guts.  I asked George:  “Is there something wrong with this soup?  What exactly is in it?”  He said:  “No, it is just as I like it.  It is intestine soup – a specialty of the house.”  He dug into the soup with large spoonfuls while I sat there trying to keep down whatever remained in my stomach.  It may have tasted good, but I couldn’t get past the smell.  Later I learned that during the war when food was scarce, people would eat most anything.  When an animal was slaughtered, they used everything.  Even in Germany there are still places where one can buy a salad made from pig’s ears.  In my youth in Pennsylvania I recall pickled tongue.  Tongues from pigs or cows would be pickled and eaten as a delicacy.  Pig’s feet are still a favourite meal for some.  To say one would not eat something depends on the situation.  When one is starving, most anything can be eaten.  Today we are fortunate to have a choice.
Sorry for the long response to your question, Alice.

Abe,

Thank you for a great story. 

My least favorite food is peas.  My  mother loved them and cooked them often.  If she had left me alone, I would probably love them too. She would make me sit at the table, long after everyone else had left, trying to choke them down.  I would fill my mouth full and  then go spit them under the house.

Now that I am old and my taste buds have weakened, I don' t have  such an aversion to  any food, but just dislike them on principle.

I never forced my children to eat anything.