Raw, primal, stomach-churning fear. It’s brought on by snakes, public speaking, and…lunch? Tune in as Molly and Matthew face down a meal they’ll never forget, no matter how hard they try. www.spilledmilkpodcast.com
Brought to you by Sur La Table.
August 19, 2010
You both are too funny! I wish I didn’t listen to this episode after eating. lol!
Ok, I was trying to listen to you guys at work, and then when Molly ate the…nato?…I laughed so hard that I snorted! Note to self: listen to spilled milk on the way to work…not at work…
My brother, sister and I used to fight over who would have to clear my grandfather’s plate after family dinner because (unlike any of us) he always left “gristle sculpture” on the edge of his dish.
For me,the scariest food (natto scary) is little fish with bones, fresh or canned. My father used to say he could get a bone in Apple Pie. What are my chances?
Matthew, have you forgiven me for making you taste tuna salad when you were about 12? You said, “why did you do that to me?” Maternal guilt is of an eternal nature.
Mine is peanut butter. I can kind of tolerate it IN things — occasionally I accept a peanut butter cookie or peanut butter cup to be polite, but otherwise I cannot even touch the stuff. I make my daughter peanut butter sandwiches, as long as I don’t have to touch the peanut butter itself. If I have to wash the peanut butter knife I will NOT touch the peanut butter with my fingers.
I think I have mostly conquered my genuine fears: egg yolk less than very-well-done (I made myself try poached eggs during Little House Food Week and they were delicious), plain yogurt (I had the same fear of fruit-at-the-bottom as you guys–I was afraid I would accidentally eat a smidgin of plain yogurt)–but organ meats is only semi-conquered. Still, it isn’t a fear the way the actual visceral fear of lightly cooked egg yolk was.
See, I was afraid of the actual stuff at the bottom, like it was a slimy fruit monster.
I’m with Molly, natto looks vile and egg salad is delightful. My biggest food fear is tapioca – especially the pudding, and also I can’t bear to watch people drink bubble tea and chew the tapioca pearls, I have a physical gagging reaction just watching someone chew boba. I’m gagging a little bit right now just thinking about it, although maybe I’m having remnant stomach spasms from looking at natto pictures…
Molly, my boyfriend also has an aversion to poultry on the bone. I made the tragic mistake of cooking a whole chicken to try to impress him back when we first started dating. He barely nibbled on some surgically carved breast meat. He kept glancing over his shoulder at the chicken carcass, like it might spring to life and attack him.
Ugh just had a flashback to the line about connective tissue in the raspberry yoghurt…. Vom.
I tried to think of foods that I actually don’t want to put in my mouth, and came up with tongue. Or, as Iris calls it, lengua. Which she LOVES to get on her tacos when we go out for tacos, and which she REALLY wants to share with me. Once she even told me, “I like the pieces with the little bumps the best,” and I almost gagged. So far I’ve put her off with “busy eating my carnitas!” because I don’t want her to know I am repelled.
I always love your episodes, but this one in particular made me laugh until I cried (and gave me a little bit of the stomach quease, too).
My irrational fear? Liver. I’m gotten over most of my food aversion, but liver will never fail to freak me out. Raw, cooked, whatever: cannot cope at all. I’m shuddering just thinking about it.
I’ve always had an inexplicable fear of the cores of fruit, like apples, pears… running in to those little husks around the seeds always made me gag as a kid. I had a roommate in college who used to eat whole apples, including the stem, seeds, EVERYTHING, and it always made me shudder. Ugh…
OMG!!! You guys are too funny! I love it.
Anyways, it is kinda embarrassing but I am afraid of fish. All types of fish and most seafood. I will eat shrimp and clam chowder but nothing else! Not only am I afraid of eating it but I am also afraid of smelling it. I cannot get over the smell. There is pretty much no chance in hell that I will ever eat it. I know it is sad and supposedly really fresh fish does not smell but I can still smell it. My fear of fish is irrational and frankly I do not really want to get over it.
This is too good. I only discovered your podcast recently and listened to this one after the junk food episode.
My horror food – when I was a kid I was encouraged to mix milk, orange juice and two raw eggs for a morning drink. I think almost a quarter of it stayed in me before the gag reflex took over.
I just finished listening to a hunk of Spilled Milk episodes on a long drive earlier this week. I couldn’t help empathizing with Molly as she entered the frightening world of natto: last year in Japan I ordered natto at a conveyor-belt sushi joint only to be grossed out beyond belief by the texture. I think there was some arm-flailing and desperate looks at my husband, who was likewise in the grips of natto, suffering from his own natto emergency. In Japan it’s considered rude to leave uneaten food on your plate–it’s disrespectful to the chef in a way that I guess it’s not here in the US–so I had to deftly and inconspicuously spit the natto into a napkin and then hold the chewed up nastiness on my lap until I left the restaurant and could dispose of it. That little experience taught me to just say ‘no’ to natto.
Love the podcast. You guys are so funny!
I love natto. Seriously. I could eat it every day. Even though it smells like dog poo.
I’m afraid of some of the ethnic delicacies readily available in my town. Like balut and tororo (which is even more snotty looking than natto!).
You guys had me in absolute stitches listening at work. My husband shares your fear of egg salad Matt. I was actually thinking of challenging him to a scary food face off, but he knows what I’m afraid of too so there would be no advantage to me. For me, it’s tinned tuna. The smell, the look, the cat food conotations, can’t do it, don’t want to!
I started listening to “Scary Food” on my lunch break while I was eating something I had made that didn’t turn out so well. I had to stop listening and switch over to “Crackers” just to get through my lunch. I made it to the description of “Nato” and said to myself, this will have to wait.
For me it’s shredded coconut. If I accidentally put something in my mouth that contains shredded coconut it can get ugly. It’s so bad that even lemon zest in a lemon meringue pie can trigger the reflex.
Brian, my best friend since junior high (that’s 35 years if anyone’s keeping track) and his cousin share my revulsion. When they were kids they once tortured each other by describing shredded coconut-related scenarios. Finally Brian told his cousin to imagine rolling around in a giant vat of shredded coconut and got his cousin to throw up.