In the spirit of my recent post Random Stuff I Like, I offer another short list: Random Stuff I Really Don’t Like….
- Pasta jambalaya: who dreamed this up? Blech. Out of respect for both rice and pasta, y’all just stick to rice-based jambalaya, please.
- Overly thick burgers: a too-thick patty throws off a burger’s essential balance, usually leads to disintegrating-bun-syndrome (where your last five or six bites are completely bunless), and is plain ol’ hard to eat unless your jaw hinges like a cobra’s.
- Oatmeal, unless it’s in cookie form.
- Sweet pickle relish: dill relish is far superior, and chopped cornichons are even better.
- Cheap jarred mayonnaise: what is the funky, synthetic processed vegetable oil odor given off by soybean-oil mayo?
More stuff I really don’t like includes cheap “fudge” coating masquerading as real chocolate (an ever-present Halloween season danger), desserts & pastries decorated with edible glitter or luster dust, the omnipresent fried chicken tender, and instant iced tea.
Bouillie 
with you on most of those, but not oatmeal….you don’t like a warm bowl of steel cut oatmeal with brown sugar, chopped toasted pecans and raisins? we make ours in the rice cooker overnight and it’s ready to go when we wake up!
Nope, sorry: no pasty, sticky, gloppy oatmeal for me. All the brown sugar & pecans in the world won’t change the awful texture. It’s like a prechewed, predigested food substitute!
Servers in restaurants who use “we” — How are we tonight? Are we ready to order? Are we enjoying our food?
It IS annoying…right up there with the chain-restaurant server’s “squatting” beside you to take your order. This isn’t a campfire, dammit: stand up, please!
Katrina – The rice cooker, really? Same ratios? This could really be something. Also if you have leftovers, try refrigerating them in a flat container, cutting them out with a cookie cutter the next day and making steel cut oat pancakes. Just pan fry in a little butter until warm and crispy. I like to top it off with a little maple at the end. Yummy!
Celeste – have you made your own steel cut oats? I was never a fan of oatmeal either, but I was shocked at the difference. The steel cut oats do away with the pasty, sticky, gloppiness. I say have you made your own, because I have still seen people overcook the steel cut to get to the traditional icky texture of regular oats, but if you follow the instructions you should come out with a much better texture. I add a pinch of salt, cinnamon, blueberries and honey.
The texture would have to be something really special to convert me into an oatmeal-eater. I’m not a huge fan of grits, either, for much the same reasons. Though enough cheese, butter, and bacon (or sauteed shrimp) do make grits somewhat edible.