I am not a fussy eater. Really, I�m not.

There�s only one thing I can�t eat, which is nuts. Of any kind. Except pine nuts which seem more like a seed than a nut to me anyway. And I know that peanuts aren�t really nuts and so I should be allergic to peanuts or other nuts but not both, but the simple thing is that however or wherever it came from, all nuts, and everything about them � smell, taste, often sight � make me vomit.

That aside, there�s no other ingredient that I refuse to eat.

But of course there are a few things that I elect not to eat when given the choice because while they don�t take me to vomit territory I really don�t like them. There are two main things on this list: olives and avocado.

I�m just not a fan. I like olive oil fine, I probably like avocado oil fine too, though I�m not conscious of having had any recently. But avocados themselves always seem mushy and heading for brown and overall pretty bland. A lot of my problem with them is definitely the texture, though I don�t know why I have an aversion to the soft green flesh in particular.

As for olives, they�re just yucky. Too salty or something.

Even though I don�t like olives or avocado, I�m not a total fusspot over them. If somebody has a meal planned I�m not going to ask them not to include their key ingredient. I�m either happy to pick them out, or in most cases just get over the fact I don�t really like them and eat it anyway.

That being said, I get really annoyed by the following trends occurring on my very own food-rich city block.

1. Avocado in sushi hand rolls. It is not necessary to put avocado in every single kind of hand roll. California rolls, avocado rolls, fine, no issue there. I eat a lot of sushi, particularly for lunch, and there are three sushi places on the same block as my office, all of which put avocado in every single type of hand roll they produce. Salmon and avocado. Teriyaki chicken and avocado. Spinach and avocado. I just want a salmon and cucumber hand roll that isn�t half avocado, is that too much to ask?

I am of course willing to go further afield in order to find a decent avocado-free salmon roll. The closest place with a hand roll to avocado ratio of less than 1:1 is two blocks north and four blocks west (or some equivalent to that, I actually have no idea whether its north, south, east or west, just that its six blocks away). Granted, they do great sushi at good prices and I am willing to walk that distance to get it. The down-side is that they�re in the food court of a large department store directly under the shoe department which leads to all sorts of spending temptation.

2. Salads. There is such a thing as a salad (other than Caesar) which does not include olives. There�s a great lunch place that opened up right next to my building about 4 months ago. They do a selection of pre-made baguettes and sandwiches, and a large selection of salads. They make them all fresh right on the premises � you can see them working away putting salads together in the morning when stopping in for coffee or juice.

Every day they have six or seven different salads to choose from or mix and match. And they don�t come pre-dressed, so you have control over that too. But until last week those salads would be a Caesar salad and then six other varieties all containing olives in large quantities. Some of the olive salads had avocado as well. Thankfully they seem to have run out of olives in the last week or so, because there are now no olives in any salads and I couldn�t be more pleased. Of course, they have substituted with almonds in a couple, but that�s a whole other problem.

I�m going back to my olive and avocado-free chicken salad now.