I’ve always been suspicious of foods deemed to be an acquired taste. Oysters. Natto. Kimchi. And frankly, even a tomato could be an acquired taste because if you don’t like it and have to force yourself to taste it enough times so that you can at least bear it, then any food at all can be an acquired taste. And I am really not sure you should force yourself to eat something you don’t like straight off the bat.
I am even more suspicious of foodstuffs that require more than one or two additions in order to be effectively edible. To taste like something you actually want to eat. Some people would name tofu in this odd category, although I don’t share that view, probably because there is little I find more interesting than a raw cube of it, still slimy with its own water, eaten whilst I am preparing something else.
There is only one thing that I name resolutely as suspicious to the point of being inedible and that is porridge oats. What foodstuff needs at least another five or six things to make it even remotely palatable? Consider the bowl I’ve just had out of simple desperation:
porridge oats * full fat milk * salt * cocoa * vanilla extract * honey * Greek yogurt * a chocolate truffle
Anything less and I’d frankly rather eat my own vomit. Additionally, every time I debase myself to have it, I always always always think of Scrooge who used to eat only porridge in order to save himself money. Yuk. Did I see that in a movie or is it in the actual book? I don’t recall but I will dust it off soon enough before Christmas, as I tend to do every few years or so. And I don’t know but, frankly, I think I’d be better off keeping a box of corn flakes for emergency rather than that depressing rusk.