Guidelines

Over-arching elements to avoid

Sauces

This is usually the first thing others notice about my families eating habits- when ordering salad at a restaurant, right off the bat, dry salad, with no dressing. Nothing. Sometimes it means not having salad, if the place has pre-mixed greens. It's not that they "just don't like dressing", there will be gagging. Many times, it takes a few iterations to correct the order. It's exhausting. It's hard to explain to front of house this isn't an allergy, it's a texture thing.

Another area where this becomes an issue is dishes where the meat is the star of the show, but much of the flavor comes from a sauce. For example, pulled pork. It's often on the dry side, and you pick the sauce based on your preferences to add both flavor and a texture contrast. When no sauce is acceptable, because of it's texture, flavor must be imparted into the meat without a sauce. This is deceptively difficult when adapting many recipes to the texture sensitive.

The tag for avoiding this: dry.

Acidity and fermentation

For the purpose of the guidelines, foods can have some acid, it just can't be front and center. Because of the 'no sauce' guideline, this is actually one of the easier items to leave out. In practice, this means no pickles, no relish, and tomato sauce can't have too much vinegar.

Throughout this site, you'll see the tag: 'gross', to denote any recipe that doesn't follow these guidelines.

The tags to find this is acidic, but there is no tag for avoiding it as most of the recipes are low acid.

Mealy, creamy, squishy

This one is hard to pin down. I first came across it when trying to serve humus. Nope, too creamy. OK, let's try straight up garbanzo beans, no spice, no acid. Nope: "Texture is wrong". Testing what made beans objectionable, it seems to correlate to size. Large beans, like garbanzo beans, kidney beans, etc, have a "squishy", "mealy" internal texture that seems to not be present in smaller beans. So black beans were fine. Retried beans are a gray area, with a layer of cheese or with crispy chips, it might be OK.

Mashed squash (I like delectica) is a no go. How is this different from mashed potato texture wise? I still don't get this one.

Mashed potatoes are OK. No idea why, with enough butter and cream to make them whippable, they should be too creamy. One kid doesn't like the texture of rice, while the other one doesn't like potatoes that have skin on, or are sliced too large.

Shrimp. My wife's says the little "popping" sensation of biting shrimp is just too much. One kid says that a really heavy breading counter-acts this, but my usual strategy is cutting them in half lengthwise and over-cooking them, making them "firm".

Fresh tomatoes are too runny/squish in the middle, and often slightly acidic, so two strikes against.

As long as it's in the background flavor wise, Mushrooms' texture can be masked by chopping it very small or just turning it into a paste in the blender. Using it as a bread substitue or as a base, like in stuffed mushrooms, is a hard no.

As many foodies recently, I've experimented with cooking using a sous-vide (hot water bath) setup. My family will not tolerate the texture of meat straight out of the sous-vide; too "squishy".

Throughout this site, you'll see the tag: 'squishy', to denote foods in this category and 'crunchy' to avoid it.

Spicy or strong flavors

This area crosses over with acidity. Of course pickles are out of the question, but even mixing in elements like capers on a sandwich or a salty kalamata olive is a no go. Indian food, Korean food, and many other cuisine are frustratingly out of bounds with this guideline.

Many fish are also in this category, as the smell is just too much. Cod in crunchy fish and chips is fine. Salmon is pushing it, and must be cooked without the skin, or smoked.

Earthy spices, like cumin are a hard no.

The tag strong is used for this guideline, but most of the recipes here are on the bland side, so there is no tag for that.

Unexplained Exceptions

First exception to these guidelines I still haven't been able to figure out is artichoke dip. It's mostly cream cheese, with jalapeno's and artichoke hearts. It seems to violate creamy/saucy, but it gets devoured whenever we make it.

The other notable exception is mac and cheese. The cheesy creamy sauce should be off limits. My working theory is that some of these specific foods have a strong, positive childhood memory or connection. Does that mean some of these objects aren't in any way related to being on the spectrum and are instead just hang-ups from a bad experience?