I don't like..... scratch that, I HATE chicken skin.

   In reference to yesterday's post... or today's?  No, yesterday's.  (I've been drinking wine the past few hours and catching up on my DVR... GHOST HUNTERS!!!!!!!!!!!!)

   Oooook.... in reference to yesterday's post about things I've never experienced with food, these are foods I hate.  Actually this is going to be a series.  So ignore what I just said/typed.

   I hate skin. 

   I just ranted about this to my mom for half an hour (like... 15 minutes ago.)  I always think I am going to like it and that this time will be the revelation.  This time will be like the movies, this time will be like the TV chefs describe it.  It never is.  It is always kind of greasy, and kind of soggy, and never appealing once it is in my mouth.  People always trick me into believing that it will be nice and crispy and salty.  Like the bacon of mammalian and avian body coverings.

   The other night my dad was craving wings.  He likes to go to Outback and con the waiters into giving him 20 wings for $12.  They smelled soooo good.  I wanted one.  However, I had just tried eating poultry skin twice in the past 2 weeks.  I tried it at my friends' Thanksgiving, and I tried it at the family Thanksgiving.  Both times were awful.  They were sort of crispy and a little salty, but overall disgusting.  I do this all the time.  I try the skin on a fresh rotisserie chicken, I do it every time I roast a bird....  I see my friends and family pick it off the carving after I have removed it from the carcass and relish it with such excitement.  Tentatively, I'll choose a small piece, enticed by the smell, cautiously taste it with my tongue.... Then:  Nothing.  I just sort of wanted to vomit.   But, like a trooper, choked it down.  This incident has played repeatedly throughout my life.  Try.  Gag.  Try.  Gag.  I obviously don't learn.

   I can't help it.

   In a similar situation to chicken skin.  I once tried pork skin.  BIG mistake.  DollyWood was new and  I was not yet keen on Appalachian delicacies.  We walked by some "historical" interpreter, and all of our mouths started watering.  My little brother didn't care what it was; he wanted some!  Jesus, it smelled so good.  They were frying something.  I like fried things.  "Cracklins" were unheard of to me, so I grabbed a tiny fistful from the little cellophane bag my brother was holding and stuffed them into my mouth.

   MAYDAY! MAYDAY!  Little bits of fried pig fat and skin littered the surrounding ground.  There might have been a tiny lingering hair between my half baby/half "adult" teeth.  This was an utterly foreign experience to me only 4 hours from our lovely, safe, non-threatening home.  (Raw fish made more sense to me!)  I couldn't believe what was happening to my taste buds.  There was a white trash, mountain-man assault on my little adolescent  tongue!  I couldn't cope.  I probably started crying.  A few years ago, I helped at a middle school's Renaissance day.  There was a booth making fresh pork rinds.  (How this related to the English Renaissance, I still fail to understand.)  I cringed; I needed to protest.  These 10 year olds had to know the horrors of what it was they were introducing to their GI tracts!  I fought the urgent need to rip the bags from their grubby little hands.

   To this day, I can't walk past the pork rinds in the store without shuddering, but I fight the urge to taste chicken skin every time it is in front of me.  It is most likely some odd character flaw.  It is probably what happens when Southerners and Northerners breed.  Whatever the reason is, I just seriously can not stand eating skin.