Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards

Just thought about this earlier while writing in another post that I didn't want to buy Chinese plum sauce 'cause it'd never get used ... when you were first enthusiastically repopulating your pantry after starting the diet, what did you buy that you ended up throwing out because you never used it or it was just too gross to believe?

fish sauce (why did I even buy this? NONE of the recipes I've printed out list it as an ingredient)
candied ginger (I hate ginger, but I always forget this and it is a rude awakening when I taste ginger and think "BLEAHHH! this is what it must taste like to eat dirty sneakers")
Boca crumbly fake meat things (like the result if you had taken the sneakers and grated the soles)
rice noodles (the reason they tasted so good at the Chinese restaurant was the large quantity of oil and spices; at home they just taste mildly unpleasantly wrong (wish I had done more experimenting before buying five bags))
basmati rice (I was always ruining it because I kept forgetting it didn't have the same liquid ratio as regular rice, plus to my uneducated rice palate it tasted just the same as plain white rice)
powdered soy milk (YUCK!!!! use chalk dust instead, it's cheaper and tastes better)
soy sour cream & cream cheese (I opened them, sniffed, couldn't figure out how I would ever be able to tell if they'd gone rancid, and pitched them)
the vast majority of soy/rice cheese (I did finally find a brand I loved, but most of them are unfairly disgusting for being so expensive)
Rice Dream vanilla ice cream (I can't even describe how nasty this was, so let us instead have a moment of quiet, dignified retching)
Amy's frozen pizza (remember pre-IBS when you would've simultaneously laughed and shuddered at the thought of soy cheese pizza? THIS IS WHY)
non-dairy coffee creamer (I don't even know why I bought this. I never used any kind of creamer before. One of those things where I got euphoric because it was safe so bought it. It sat in my cupboard for a long time, quietly and accusingly waiting for use, until I finally guiltily pitched it)
Panda licorice (I didn't know it was licorice. It was bedecked in a beguiling pink wrapper and said "strawberry". OK, so maybe I should have read closer and seen the "licorice candy" bit. I couldn't figure out why it was so FREAKING DISGUSTING until I took a closer look at the wrapper.)
The majority of herbal tea (I've finally found a couple kinds I like, but most of it kind of tastes like cat pee)
Luna bars/Z bars (Some were moderately OK, like if your only other alternative was to eat Amy's pizza or a bottle of fish sauce. But fat-free Saltines are way more tasty. I don't know why I always kept trying to like Luna bars, even though they tended to disagree with me. I think I just liked the idea of eating something that was prepackaged in a shiny wrapper.)
safe "natural" sodas, with no carbonation and no HFCS (if that sounds gross to you, you are so dead on)
vegan mayonnaise (I guess mayo just isn't any good without morally objectional unfertilized eggs)

Another mistake was Wrongful Bulk Buying. At first I was daunted by the "forbidden" list, so if I found out an item was safe, I got really excited and bought large quantities of it. To this day I STILL have excessive quantities of marshmallow creme, fat-free refried beans, cake mix, pasta, baby food, and about 20 different kinds of vinegar.

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jen

"It's one of the most serious things that can possibly happen to one in a battle -- to get one's head cut off." -- LC

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