Surprising Food Disappointments

As I find more and more "healthy living" blogs, I find more and more foods I think sound yummy and want to try.  Many of them turn out great, some turn out to be surprising disappointments.  Today I thought I would share some of those disappointments.

Steel cut oats
First, let me say I love oatmeal.  It is yummy, creamy, and comforting goodness.  I like quick cooking oats, regular rolled oats, and those little packets of cinnamon flavorted Quaker Weight Control Oatmeal.  In my prior life, I also consumed the regular pure sugar flavored packets of instant Quaker oatmeal, but I'm pretty sure those hold no nutritional value for me now or ever again.  Anyway, given my oatmeal repertoire, I felt sure that steel cut oats would be my next love.  I'm sad to say I was wrong.  I have tried these things a number of ways and I just can't get them to a point of tasting good.  First, the cooking process is long, which is fine and I was prepared for the time.  However, I wasn't prepared for the mess of them boiling over if you cover the pan, or the disgusting dried ring of yuck around the edge of the pan that forms when you do not cover them.  Ucky ucky ucky!  In serving these I have tried adding healthful things like fruit, nuts, almond milk, milk, evaporated cane juice, bananas, and even nut butters (see next paragraph).  I mean, steel cut oats are not the worst thing in the world, but they are not good enough to add to my pantry for good.  I like to keep things simple, so I'll stick to my Quaker rolled oats for now.

Nut butter in oatmeal, steel cut or rolled or otherwise
I love nut butters!  Peanut butter is my favorite, but I also like almond butter on occasion.  I thought for sure adding either of these to my oatmeal would make for nut buttery goodness.  Wrong!  This combination seems not to be for me.  I think it's because while I like PB or AB on toast or a toasted English muffin, I do not like either of them HOT and they get hot in a bowl of hot oatmeal.  I still look at bloggers' pictures of a bowl of oatmeal topped with nut butter and think dang, that looks good, but for some reason looks aren't everything.

Butternut squash
I thought this was something I really liked.  Loved, no, but liked, yes.  I had it at a friend's house one time and it was so yummy.  I realize now the yumminess was from the butter and brown sugar that was added.  I have been wanting to try roasted butternut squash, butternut squash risotto, and all other kinds of things involving this squash.  Sadly, when I roasted it, the smell was so much like squash I almost gagged and then the taste of it was pure SQUASH.  Ew, icky.  Bummer, I don't like squash.

Roasted chick peas
Another thing I read about on other blogs and was anxious to try was roasted chick peas.  Now, mind you, I only tried these once but once was probably enough for this lifetime.  I do love a good garbanzo bean, in minestrone, on salads, even plain, but the roasted variety just didn't cut the mustard.  I was expecting something like a roasted nut, but what I got was a roasted bean.  Blech! 

So there you have it.  Just a few things that I'll not be adding to my food plan.  Stay tuned for tomorrow's post on Yummy Food Finds. 

What have you tried lately that you thought would be awesome but turned out to be icky?