I recently started thinking about all of this because a coworker linked me a great blog, Steve, Don't Eat It! I read through the entries, had some great laughs, cringed a few times then started to think about the foods I won't eat. 

Top of my list for now and all time...Sauerkraut. 

There are few things more evil than sauerkraut and I think all of them are mentioned somewhere in the Old Testament. Now, that having been said, the truth is, I've never had sauerkraut. So why the hate?

The biggest part of it comes simply, I was raised to hate sauerkraut. My dad was born in 1928 in a small farm town in west Texas. He was born the son of a share cropper at a time when the great depression had already taken hold. My dad would be the oldest of 11 brothers and sisters. 

During the lean months, when things were slim and it was hardest to keep food on the table, my grandfather would do sanitation work to make ends meet. Restaurants would throw out old cabbage. If you collected it, took it home, peeled off the outer leaves and boiled the hell out of the rest with some salt, you'd wind up with a sour, bitter cauldron of barely edible, only slightly palatable cabbage soup. 

Because of the years he spent eating that just in order to survive, my dad grew up to hate cooked cabbage that had soured even slightly. He passed that right along to me, so I grew up hating sauerkraut. But wait...it gets worse.

When I was 19 years old I joined the Navy. During my 8 weeks in bootcamp, I had to spend about 6-7 days working in the galley, we all did in those days. One day I'm changing out milk boxes (yes, it was a box of milk...a 5 gallon box of milk with a tube coming out of the bottom), when this short mess specialist comes up to me and says, "You there! You're tall, come help me with this."

I followed her into the kitchen area, thinking I'm going to be called upon to employ my 6' 2" by fetching items off of high shelves. No...no, it was nothing quite so nice.

She leads me back to a giant, 40+ gallon vat of cold, congealed sauerkraut. It had been sitting for hours and the stench was awful. Apparently, some moron had neglected to replace the screen over the drain pipe when he made the sauerkraut. So when they went to drain the liquid from this god awful crap, it just clogged the pipe, leaving behind this lump of grey, stringy, slimy junk. 

I had to crawl into this vat, submerging myself head first up to my shoulders in cold sauerkraut, so I could dig out this pipe with my fingers, removing excess sauerkraut and holding back the flood long enough to replace the drain screen. 

When I had to inevitably come up for air, the sauerkraut would rush back into the pipe, robbing me of most of my progress. Finally, I was able to clear it out, replace the drain screen and they were able to remove the rest of the moisture before scooping out the congealed mass that remained. 

Now, I'm not a big fan of any bean larger than a kidney bean. I don't care much for boiled spinach by itself. There's numerous cultural dishes I avoid (gaegogi, balut, cuitlacoche, and more). However, for the most part, if it's considered food, I'll try it. 

Sauerkraut though...I hate it with a fire that burns with the fury of a thousand suns.