My 7 Most Quirky Eating Habits

People often come up to me and ask, “What are your 7 most quirky eating habits?”

I usually respond, “That’s an odd, random question. But sure, here they are:”

  1. If this doesn't make you drool, either (a) you're not human or (b) you're vegetarian.

    I’m the slowest eater ever. Seriously. Sometimes it takes me so long to eat my breakfast at work that by the time I finish, it’s lunchtime.

  2. I dilute beverages at a ration of 3 parts juice or soda to 2 parts water. It stretches the delicious beverages of the world so they last longer. You might contend that they’re no longer delicious if you dilute them, but I’ve done it for so long that normal juice or soda tastes too strong.
  3. I make chocolate chip pancakes (Bisquik + semi-sweet chocolate chips) every other Sunday morning, and I eat the leftovers the next 2-3 days. Why every other? Because I love chocolate chip pancakes and I don’t want to overeat them to the point that they’re no longer good. Also, I don’t eat cereal. I want warm things in my tummy in the morning.
  4. I need three meals a day or I’ll get a migraine. This is the main reason why I haven’t applied for Survivor or The Amazing Race.
  5. I get an intense craving for dark chocolate at 3:00 every day.
  6. I eat a baby spinach salad at every dinner at the end of the meal. No matter what I ate before then, it cleanses my palate and makes me feel healthy. Even when I get my quarterly craving for Popeye’s fried chicken and end up looking like Jaba the Hutt on the couch, I feel clean afterwards if I end the meal with a salad.
  7. I very rarely mix sweet and salty. No sweet and sour chicken–just sour, please. No cranberries or fruit or sweet dressing on my salad. I pretty much want salty during the meal and a sweet dessert afterwards.

Okay, I know I’m not the only one out there with weird eating habits. Who’s with me? Let’s do this! (Runs out the door naked. No one follows.)

No, seriously: What are your quirky eating habits?

19 thoughts on “My 7 Most Quirky Eating Habits”

  1. Is #5 a euphemism for your very, very, very well-publicized interracial dating preferences? Kidding 🙂

    I can’t stand mixing vegetables into things. I’ve come to accept that vegetables must be eaten, but I just can’t seem to mix them into other foods. Jamey knows my intense dislike for putting lettuce on tacos, sandwiches, etc. It doesn’t stop there–lettuce is just a frequent offender.

    Reply
  2. Apparently I eat everything on my plate separately. This is nothing new, but its something my parents made me self conscious of when they called it to my attention at the dinner table.

    Example: Say you have a plate of mashed potatoes, pork steak and green beans. I’ll eat all of the green beans before moving on to the pork steak…and so on. Apparently its hereditary because my Aunt does the same thing.

    Then recently it started getting weirder…

    I was on lunch break at a restaurant near my work. They make this thing called, “The Med Salad”. This particular meal comes with the obvious leafy greens, but then they add curly noodles, and black olives. Occasionally I’ll order chicken or tofu to go with it. Now, I already knew i saved the olives for last when eating this meal because they’re my favorite part, they’re oh so salty and delicious.

    The manager of the restaurant happened to walk by as I just finished eating the greens. All that was left on my plate was the cubed tofu and the mediterranean olives. He looked down and said, “Is the tofu not to your liking?” Then I had to explain my newly pointed out weird eating habit to him. So now, do I not only eat things separately on my plate when they’re compartmentalized, I now will eat them separately when mixed together as well.

    This makes me worry about eating alphabet soup for fear I will have to eat all 26 letters in order. :/

    Reply
      • Never realized I was doing it until my parents pointed it out to me and said it was weird! Now it makes me self conscious at “fancy” meals. The salad thing however, I eat the items in it from least delicious to most delicious, but never realized until the moment the manager said something. Hmmm…so I guess yeah the answer would be it happens naturally AND never realized it. 🙂

        Reply
  3. Doesn’t your food get cold and gross when you take so long to eat it? Do you ever dare to eat an ice cream cone? You can’t really take your time with those!

    Reply
    • My food gets a little cold, but it’s not too bad. Fortunately I like melted ice cream, but yes, I never order ice cream in a cone.

      Reply
  4. I eat things on my plate based on order of deliciousness. That is I torture myself eating the veggie crap on my plate first, but then reward myself and cleanse my palate in the end with delicious carby things (rice, potatoes, etc.)

    Also, I hate greasy nuts. (Mind out of the gutter, please.) Peanuts and almonds I’m cool with. Everything else makes me gag.

    Reply
    • Ah, delayed reward. An excellent technique.

      Are there that many greasy nuts out there? I’m trying to think of a greasy nut. Like, walnuts aren’t greasy, right? Nor are macadamias or cashews. Did you have a bad experience with a particularly greasy nut?

      Reply
      • Walnuts are greasy! You put one in your mouth and can taste the fat. Surprisingly, though, I don’t mind tasting the fat in whole milk.

        Reply
        • Hm. I’ve never thought of walnuts as greasy. I’ll have to test that out. And no problem with milk? That’s not greasy, though, so it makes sense. What about bacon?

          Reply
    • I haven’t heard that one often, but I definitely understand. I put a little bit in–enough for a little moisture, but not enough to make the cereal limp and soggy.

      Reply
  5. I don’t eat anything with a bone in it. No fried chicken, no chicken wings, no t-bones, no bone-in chicken breast… the only exception to this is ribs. But, I haven’t eaten ribs in years (probably because of the bone issue) so it’s no ish. It just feels like I’m picking apart a carcus if I’m tearing meat off the bone.

    I, too, used to eat my food separately, but have kicked that habit.

    Reply
    • No bones at all! Wow. Trev and I have this debate about buffalo wings. I like the bone in–the flavor and texture is perfect, even though it’s annoying to gnaw meat off the bone. Trev likes boneless, which, I agree, are considerably easier to eat. But they’re also breaded, which is a very different taste than boned, unbreaded wings.

      Reply
  6. I could write forever about my weird eating. It defines me, and not in a good way. My comment will be as long as your post. Unfortunately, you’ve opened this sodium-laden can of worms.

    1. I, too, take forever to eat. Yeah, the food’s a little chilly at the end, but you tend to eat the things that get cold the fastest first (fries before meat, for example). I tend to eat things one-at-a-time, which is the main reason it takes me forever to finish a meal.

    2. If I ask for something plain and crap comes on it anyway, I can’t scrape it off unless it’s tomatoes. If pickles, mayo, mustard, onions, etc. come on a sandwich, I will send it back. The condiments will never come off completely and stuff like pickles and onions are so pungent, that you can’t get the flavor out. I don’t care for tomatoes on their own, but their taste is so mild that they don’t leave much behind.

    3. I will sop up pickle juice from a plate and give away anything that a pickle touches. I HATE pickles. Pickles can’t come close to something without infusing that something with their moist vinegary nastiness. I gave away a Chick-Fil-A sandwich b/c of this reason just a few weeks ago.

    4. I have the appetite of an 8-year old. It’s unhealthy and terribly embarrassing when I go to someone’s house to eat. At senior prom, my date took me to this really fancy restaurant his antichrist mother recommended and I couldn’t find a single thing on the menu I’d eat. They ended up making me a hamburger, which was nowhere to be found on the menu of watercress salad, escargot, asparagus, etc. It was the best hamburger I’d ever had but I was almost in tears b/c I was so mortified that I couldn’t find a single thing on the menu I’d eat.

    5. I LOVE sweet & salty. Chocolate covered pretzels are a favorite snack and I sprinkle a tiny bit of fleur de sel on my chocolate chip cookies.

    6. I don’t eat anything whole. No matter how small, I will always bite it, as opposed to putting the whole thing in my mouth. I’m talking about real food here, not like, Tic-Tacs and what not. Brownie bites, small scones, fries, nuggets, mini cupcakes…all are at minimum, 2 bite foods.

    7. I won’t start dinner until everyone has their food and has started eating. Even at home, I will not start eating until my fiance sits down to eat, even if I’ve been waiting 10 minutes.

    8. I can literally list the vegetable’s I’ll eat: raw carrots (cook them and the deal is off), raw spinach, potatoes, lettuce. That’s it. No, I don’t like corn, no I don’t like sweet potatoes, no I don’t like broccoli even when covered in cheese, no I don’t like a single other vegetable that’s not on this list. I like many tomato-based sauces and I’ll force down green beans if they’re the vegetables being served but I don’t “like” them.

    9. I can’t stand beans. Beans gross me out. The hard exterior that snaps away to give way to a mushy inside…disgusting.

    10. I’ve always wondered why someone would can worms. And why would those worms be alive and moving still when you opened the can? Or is a “can of worms” those silly joke cans that shoot the springed worms?

    Reply
  7. Your #6 reminds me of another one for me: If possible, I eat everything with a fork or fork/knife. I like bite-size pieces that don’t get my mouth dirty.

    I like #7 a lot. Those are some good old fashioned Southern manners you’ve got there.

    Reply
  8. Um. I don’t love okra or eggplant but will eat them in certain circumstances (eggplant pureed in soup and okra fried until the texture can’t be ascertained).

    Otherwise, I pretty much eat everything. Sometimes I can’t stand giant chunks of fat in meat, but I might choke ’em down if people are around me and eating.

    I actually really wish I didn’t like food as much as I do. It would make life much easier.

    Oh well 🙂

    Reply
    • Neeraja–I don’t think your friends will hold it against you if you don’t eat the giant chunks of fat. No one likes to eat those. 🙂

      Reply

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