It takes all kinds..of food

Everybody has different tastes and nowhere is that more apparent than when you talk about tastes in food. Sometimes your tastes are guided by your early food experiences (another great reason to encourage playing with food in your children). For example, my Mom never made lamb, so I never had lamb until after I was married and I never had a beef roast that was actually roasted - we had either eye roast or chuck roast that was braised. I grew up eating mostly canned vegetables, and usually they were cooked untill they were soft. We did have some fresh vegetables, but that consisted mainly of tomatoes in the summer and veggies for dip. A salad was a once in awhile thing and always included iceberg lettuce.

It is funny how some things that you associate with childhood become comfort food to you, but other people just don't get it. One of my favorites is what I call graham cracker cereal, which is basically graham crackers broken up in a bowl, with milk poured over and eaten. See, you don't get it either. Neither do my kids, but for me it takes me back to my childhood.

My daughter Bridget thinks the combination of potato chips and chocolate syrup is great, but she can't eat it in front of me! My husband will take a perfectly delicious serving of shepherd's pie, and slather it with ketchup - I just don't get it. My daughter Katie mixes her juice half and half with water AND drinks milk with ice, neither of which appeals to me.

At least two of my children think mayonnaise is great to eat with french fries and two others mix ketchup and mayo together for their fries! I love asparagus, but Molly says the smell makes her gag.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I remember that my grandfather Knighting loved to top just about everything with vinegar. His house always had that pungent smell - he put it on eggs, greens, green beans. To this day I wonder if he had some type of deficiency that made vinegar taste so good to him. This the man who did not know who I was when I went to visit him in the hospital after he had a stroke... until I told him I was "Slickhead", a name he had given me as a baby (I was bald!)

If you are around weird food habits enough, you even start picking them up. My husband is a great fan of peanut butter... on a spoon! He will fill a spoon with peanut butter and eat it like a lollipop, and unfortunately I have picked up this habit as well, so now there are two of us grossing the kids out!

Okay, so now you know mine (and my family's) weird food tastes. Now it's your turn. What do you eat that no on else gets? It's okay... different strokes for different folks or as my kids would say, it's all good.