Changing Taste Buds

2+ years ago my mom lost her sense of taste. She was miserable. Besides being ill she had little desire for food as it was all like drywall mud. She forced herself to eat (mostly Boost) to stay alive. Between COPD and no appetite she lost muscle mass and couldn't stand up for long stretches.

One of our last conversations was how she said this was no way to live. She said she hadn't given up entirely because of her grands and great grands but she was ready.

She and dad were a house divided as dad was a confirmed Miracle Whip guy and mom was mayo only. One of the last times I saw her she went into her kitchen and grabbed a small jar of MW, stuck a spoon in it and ate some. She said "this should make your father bloody happy".
 
I don't know if I even taste coffee anymore - it's just a necessity of life and the nine cups I have every morning barely gets me through the day. If I ever loose the taste of my other life-support item, BACON, then I may as well just die.
 
I like Calamari. Scallops don't like Me. I barf black bile. Only seafood I can't eat. Any of the tentacle fish has to be cooked exact or You might as well eat a set of BF Goodrich tires. I love oysters cooked any way. Meat needs to be medium rare, or a premium steak can be rare. Not a fan of Sushi. Yuk! I like My veggies cooked soft and I prefer sweet potatoes to white anytime, especially fries. I find at My almost advanced age My taste buds still work very good, but are a little picky. And, I like Rocky Mountain Oysters too. Lots of them up here.
 
Coffee = consciousness… least ways, at the orifice.
Sweet potatoes, mussels, calamari - yum!
Beets + mashed taters + sauerkraut + polish sausage was a childhood staple. The beets and taters were out of the garden, so was the kraut. I miss that. Clausens is in the ballpark, but only just. Canned beets look the same, but not so much.
Broccoli remains off the menu :p
 
Clams, mussels, scallops . . . all good, but I'm not eating an oyster if it's a matter of life or death. No matter how they are prepared --or not prepared--they taste horrible. Same for bell peppers. No way, Jose.
 
Not much in the seafood category I don't like. On the fence with scallops, like the flavor when they are fresh but the texture gives me the willies. Best calamari I've ever had was at Hemenway's in Providence, RI. Liked it so much we went back twice more. Lightly sauteed, not breaded and with little hot peppers mixed in...man I may need to get a plane ticket tonight and get back up there.
 
Never did acquire a taste for oysters or scallops. This was despite the fact that I spent my youthful summers in pursuit of both. Our grandparents lived on the North Carolina coast and we usually spent our summers there. Our grandfather would provide the boat, motor, and equipment and send us forth to gather the oysters and scallops along with tending to his crab pots and crewing on his fishing boat.

Of course as we were unloading oysters on his dock he would inevitably "spill" a few back into the water. Low and behold, a couple of summers later he had his own private oyster bed off his own private dock. He could walk out his back door, stroll 25 yards to the dock and harvest his own anytime he wanted. He loved showing that off to visitors.... "Hey! do you like oysters?"

Scallops always tasted really gamey to me. Oysters were like eating snails. I don't like those either.
 
Not much in the seafood category I don't like. On the fence with scallops, like the flavor when they are fresh but the texture gives me the willies. Best calamari I've ever had was at Hemenway's in Providence, RI. Liked it so much we went back twice more. Lightly sauteed, not breaded and with little hot peppers mixed in...man I may need to get a plane ticket tonight and get back up there.

Hemenway's is great. If you like really well prepared seafood, it's hard to beat and it's nice to sit there and watch Providence life go by while you eat dinner. Calamari? Errrr...not so much. It's like a fishy tasting rubber band to me. Scallops are best grilled in olive oil and some garlic. I used to like fried sea food but these days the after taste is hard for me to get past and it always seems that they use too much batter. Once a year I make a pilgrimage to Barnacle Billy's in Perkins Cove, Maine for a fired clam roll but that's about it for fried sea food.
 
Couple places here on the island have great
fried calamari.
Usually get it as an appetizer.

Can't drink enough anymore to go with raw oysters on the
half shell.

Now..."Snot on a rock"...Wife can knock out half dozen like
they are grapes.

Calamari is great so long as it is not overcooked. Now, phlegm on a half shell? Nope, not gonna go there.
 
Speaking of calamari ..... I once adventurously ordered the "stuffed calamari" at a high end Spanish restaurant in Wash. D.C. My thoughts after choking it down with lots of wine were .... I think I just ate an old piece of bicycle inner tube stuffed with hamburger helper !!

High end restaurant.... would that have been the "1023 Club?" :D
 
Taste was secondary. It was "fire for effect".

Am familiar with all of those, except Cisco. Never heard of it. All were intended to get you drunk cheaper and let you panhandle better. In the area where I grew up, the discriminating winos preferred Night Train. At least that was what most if the empty bottles I saw in the gutters were.
 
Taste was secondary. It was "fire for effect".



Yeah, we did the Boone's Farm Tickle Pink stuff for a short while. Then we found that you could do better with cheap beer. I remember Texas Pride for 75 cents a six-pack. Other things on the 'Can't believe we used to drink that stuff' list:

Boilermakers
Peppermint schnapps
Root beer schnapps
Cinnamon schnapps
Rumple Minze
Goldschlager
Jagermeister
Pernod

The list could go on.
 
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