The thing is, it’s not entirely their taste: it’s their texture. Now, I don’t particularly like the taste or even the smell of roasted peanuts. It’s just too strong, maybe too earthy. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but I don’t like it. And yet, I think that peanut butter is good stuff. Smooth, of course, but as long as it’s a nice, fully-processed kind, like Skippy for example, then I’m happy with it. The organic stuff tends to be too strong for my taste, and usually ends up separating and looking fairly nasty. Yes, I eat the Reeses’ stuff, and even though the peanut butter in the cups isn’t entirely smooth, it’s pretty darn close. And the chocolate certainly makes it more palatable.
Marzipan? Yeah, that’s good stuff. Almond is a really nice flavor. And I once had a pistachio-flavored ice cream that didn’t actually contain any pistachios, and it was excellent. I’d actually really like to find more non-pistachio pistachio ice cream. You never really see walnut, or pecan, or brazil nut flavoring, so I can’t say whether I like them or not.
So it’s not really the taste that puts me off nuts. Nope, it’s the texture. Nuts just have an odd texture, one that isn’t completely crunchy. It’s more…well, actually, it’s less: less than crunchy, as it doesn’t crunch so much as crumble in a hard, oily way. Chips are crunchy; you bite one, and it snaps. Nuts don’t snap, they just compress, then crack, and the pieces slide together…I think it’s too much like teeth grinding. You want them to snap, but instead you get that kinda-crunchy, somewhat oily stickiness that just doesn’t feel right.
The thing is, that same texture is transmitted to all but the microscopically small bits of nuts. Whole nuts? Hate ‘em. Crushed nuts sprinkled on ice cream sundaes? Heresy. Nuts polluting otherwise decent cakes and pastries? Work of the devil. Nuts in candy bars? Well, while generally a good way to spoil candy, I’ve actually been known to eat them, if it’s a nut other than peanut. Very rarely, to be sure, and even though the chocolate/caramel/whatever tends to mask the nut fairly adequately, I just can’t fully enjoy the candy, knowing as I do that nuts lurk within, and expecting to encounter one of the things with every mastication of my…erm…mandibles, I suppose.
Now, I don’t like mushrooms, either, but that’s pretty much because of taste. The things taste exactly like you expect fungus to taste. Fungus. It’s just not a pretty word. No one ever says “Oh, yes! Fungus! Woo-hoo! It’s all mine, baby!” Although that’s a sentiment that I can certainly agree with. Hell, fungus involves spores. Name one story, novel, or movie where something good comes from spores. Exactly, case closed.