The following entry was triggered by Xenon's recent entry (thanks KW!):

When I was young, my sister and my mother and I lived on a farm in rural Connecticut, not far from the ocean. You could have classified us as poor, I suppose, always having trouble paying the utility bills, but we had a roof over our heads, clothes on our backs and enough to eat.

My sister had a tendency to be a picky eater--not this, not that, something is too crispy, something else with too many beans. You get the idea.

We couldn't waste food. While we had enough to eat (my mother bought 20 pound sacks of rice and beans and flour), wasting food was not something we could do.

We grew our own vegetables and potatoes and jerusalem artichokes (I was in charge of the garden), trading them with the neighbors for milk from their cows. We had chickens for eggs; the chickens did a good job on converting insects into eggs. I became an expert on catching blue shelled crabs and scooping clams out of the mud at low tide.

The major food purchased was meat--neckbones made great soup and were nearly free; ground meat could be stretched by putting it into spaghetti sauce over rice or beans.

To avoid a daily struggle with my sister over food, my mother allowed each of us to have only one food we would not eat and were not required to eat. If that food was served, we could get ourselves a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead--or go hungry. There were to be no arguments about any other comestible; we ate what was served.

Although I do remember a turkey soup made from the leftover carcass that even the dog wouldn't eat. My mother wasn't a very good cook.

My sister decided instantly that she would not tolerate liver in any form. My choice for the excluded food item was oysters. Slimy, gray, nasty things, even if they were free (we could just pick them off the rocks down at the edge of our beach). To this day, I won't eat oysters. I'd rather starve.

If you had to choose, which food would you exclude?