As a further elaboration: growing up, I absolutely hated pasta salad. I could not and would not eat it. But one day, when I was about 22-23, I was working somewhere that includes meals, since shifts were literally all day for a week (save eight hours for sleeping). The cook made a pasta salad that I could only describe as “orgasmic.” I ate that same pasta salad for every meal for the next two days until they finally tossed the leftovers. Ever since then, I have been “converted” to enjoy pasta salad. That one dish completely changed how my body reacts to a food that I already tried several times.
Any “salad” that wasn’t some type of leafy green and dressing. Pasta, macaroni, tuna, potato, and I think coleslaw caught some strays causes of the cream adjacent association.
I found out it was raw green peppers and celery I don’t like. But taste change. After I got into cooking and learned what mirapoux was, it was over. I still prefer an acid based slaw as opposed to cream, and I still don’t really fuck with raw green peppers (I would never complain about them if I got them, I don’t even think I would ask for them to be removed, I just would probably cook them if I was at home first).
It was the fourth of fifth date with my girlfriend. She was an avid cook and wanted to cook me dinner… Specifically lasagna.
I arrived at her apartment with her in full swing preparing it… The only problem was all the pasta was green, it was a vegetarian lasagna (she’s not vegetarian). Asparagus and other vegetables rounded it out. It looked really unappetizing.
Here’s the problem. By this time I was REALLY into this girl and here she was spending a lot of effort making me something that I really didn’t think I could eat. I was afraid this was going to end our relationship.
So I spent the whole time watching her make this dish telling myself… “Ok Canopy, you’re a 34 year old man and not a child. You can pretend to enjoy it this once. It won’t kill you.”
Over and over that was going through my mind.
We sit down at the table and she told me to serve myself and I dished out as much as I thought polite…
Then I took a bite.
I ended up eating two servings worth it was so damn good.
OH, and she and I have been married for 20 years now and have two boys. Also, food became one of the cornerstones of our relationship. She took me from being a Midwest redneck meat and potatoes child, to a full blown foodie that actually has a wider palate that her.
She also taught me how to cook and it turned out I am really good at it. I made us salmon cakes with an aioli, with mashed potatoes (that I just threw together without a recipe), and roasted broccoli.
I’m smiling ear to ear over here. Lovely story.
For me it was fish. When I grew up we didn’t eat out often and when we did I never had fish. The fish my mom cooked at home was few and far between and it wasn’t very good in my opinion.
Up through college I would have said I didn’t like fish, but when I started working I went out some work dinners where the company was paying for it at upscale restaurants. The first few times I ordered steak, but I got old so I decided to try the fish dish. I still remember it, 30 years later, that I had a fish with nuts on top that was just awesome. After that when I went into fancier restaurants I tried to find a fish as good as that. And the fish weren’t good, but some of the fish were awesome, and I really found I liked fish if it was prepared right.
I never liked steak. Growing up, my parents tended to overcook everything (not sure if deliberate, my dad always ordered his steak well done at restaurants), which made eating steak or pork chops an annoyingly chewy experience all for the reward of dry, bland meat.
Just a few months ago, I bought a striploin cut and decided to keep it simple and just die a fry/bake and got lucky and cooked it perfectly (I say got lucky because I had screwed up my plan but caught it at the perfect time and the next few attempts weren’t nearly as good because I didn’t screw up the flawed plan and inadvertently stop cooking it when it happened to be perfect). And now I get why some people are obsessed with steaks.
I still prefer burgers and generally meats that aren’t beef if I’m having meat, but every now and then I’ll try a steak. Though I got a mixer and grinder, so there’s a decent chance that the nice cut will get turned into a nice burger or meatballs, now that I have easy access to ground meat that isn’t just from scraps or cheap cuts and don’t have to hand mix it.
I was a picky eater as a child. There are tons of foods I didn’t like and would not eat. As an adult I’ve been challenging myself to try these foods again. The most dramatic difference in what I tasted versus what I expected was just fresh cut strawberries. I was at a wedding and they had a fruit display. I tried one, and then I got more. It turns out that a lot of the foods I didn’t like as a kid were either not the right temperature or bad quality.
I recently came around on non-seafood sushi (sweet potato tempura rolls). I eat seafood once a year in good faith — all types, over the years — and it’s always a hard no, and I had just lumped sushi into that category. But I honestly didn’t know there were veggie sushi options until this past year, so I gave it a try and loved it.
I’m similarly not a fan of seafood, and I’ve given it plenty of fair shakes, and will continue to do so, I’m not a picky eater by any stretch of the imagination and I want to like it, especially since I love fishing
But I do personally find raw fish to be more palatable than cooked. I wouldn’t say it’s good, but it’s not bad, I wouldn’t seek it out but if it’s what’s available I wouldn’t be mad about it.
I also, in general, find freshwater fish to be better than saltwater. At least around me I don’t tend to see a whole lot of freshwater fish on menus or in grocery stores, if you’re in a similar boat, that might be another avenue for you to investigate the next time you decide to give seafood a chance.
I’ve also played around making some oddball non-fish sushi since my wife doesn’t share in my dislike of fish and is a sushi fiend, so it’s a way to scratch her itch for that while also making something I’ll eat. Probably my best creation has been a spam, pineapple, and jalapeno roll.
Meanwhile, I like nearly all fish except freshwater fish (trout excluded).
If you make teriyaki Spam and eat that with rice and nori, it’s basically spam musubi, which is surprisingly good.
Sushi is the one food I can’t eat anymore after getting gastric sleeve surgery. I mean I can do sashimi still but what’s the point without the rice ya know?
High quality sashimi is fantastic.
“Sushi” technically just refers to the vinegared rice. There are a number of non-seafood sushi options. Cucumber, pickled gourd (kampyo), egg, avocado…
one time a popsicle turned me bi
I’m choosing to believe you were a straight woman and it was the frigidity that made you attracted to women.
Suck on that!
If you’re joking, that’s a pretty good pun
Creamsicle?
Really really really good Sashimi converted me, and then really not great overpriced shashimi unconverted me.
Actual good beef steak, with fat rendered well, good moisture, good aromatics, good salt, and really good layer char. Basically, reverse sear done really well. That shit is godly.
In that same vein, mushrooms and wine, reduced with garlic and cream as a sauce, on top of said steak. I did not eat mushrooms before that.
So many times. Hated asparagus until my aunt made it for me at 16/17 years old. Now I can’t get enough.
A Peruvian/Japanese fusion restaurant in DC ended my absolute disdain for mushrooms (specifically shitake) when I was in my mid 30s
I have learned to keep trying things I think I don’t like every few years because you never know what meal will change your palette - and maybe your life
When I was a child, we’d often see people walking at the edge of a farm fence adjacent to a country road near us.
I asked my dad what those people were doing. “They’re looking for asparagus,” he said. Hmph. I knew my dad was just making shit up again, especially with a funny word like asparagus.
Some time later he told me to go up to the fence at the edge of our yard and find some asparagus. Oh, dad, you slay me.
You know what I still see to this day? People walking that same country road, with the same grocery bags. They are foraging for wild asparagus. It’s a real thing.
He should have taken you asparagus foraging to teach you how. It was unreasonable to expect you to know something he didn’t teach you.
My father was many things. A forager was not one.
To be fair, the way asparagus grows looks like a prank. It’s like someone just stuck it in the ground lol
The first time I had a Hefeweisen was the first time I genuinely enjoyed drinking a beer. Since then I’ve been much more receptive to other types of beer but wheat beers will always be my preference.
Same here! I always felt like the odd one out for not liking any beer. One day I was at a friend’s house and they had a random assortment in their fridge and I saw one with a really cool label and it claimed to be from “the world’s oldest brewery” which sounded promising.
It was Weihenstephaner Hefe Weißbier, which was of course the easiest thing in the world for me to remember and to request at the time 😆
After that, a local brewpub restaurant had a wheat beer with a hint of raspberry flavor that I liked, and eventually I learned to drink most any beer, but I still love a Weihenstephaner when I come across it.
it’s so good.
I’ve had a few of their other varieties as well and all have been good too!
True. I love a lot of fruity and lambics too. We used to have Pyramid brewery here, they made an AMAZING apricot ale that I miss dearly
I didn’t realize Pyramid was gone. My ex used to drink the apricot ale.
Sours can be really fun too. There is so much creativity in brewing, there’s always tons of great new things to try.
My husband once joked that I like to drink my bread. It is so hard to find a good Hefe where I am. I’m tired of the IPA trend.
In 2016 I was traveling around New Zealand and had an amazing mushroom and cheese toastie. It was so good that I remember thinking, as I drove away, that I’d be happy to eat that toastie over a lot of foods I normally enjoy.
Around a year later I decided to stop eating meat. I begun by allowing myself to eat fish and over a month or so gave up that as well. While not directly related, that mushroom toastie planted a seed in my brain that being a vegetarian didn’t mean eating salad every day.
I don’t know if or when I would have become a vegetarian anyway, but that toasted sandwich certainly helped me decide when I was ready.
Mushroom and cheese toastie… I’d never thought about that but might give it a go.
That’s rad, I’ve been on a similar path but I keep on going back to meat from fish
Don’t worry about being an absolutist!
Eating less meat is 100% a win. Celebrate that!
BLT. I always hated tomatoes, then I started growing them with my mom. Grew some called ‘Bread and Salt’ tomatoes. Holy fuck, my brain expanded — best sandwich I’ve had in recent memory.
Yes, but i mostly chalk it up to me becoming less of a picky eater over time. In this sense it has happened with:
- Coleslaw
- potato salad
- various types of soup
- avocado based foods.
Sometimes you try a new food and its so good that it’s all you want to eat (seems to happen most times i visit a new food truck.)
I had a blip where i loved eating olives on pizza and then i started to hate olives again.
Avocado. For some reason, for years, I thought they’d taste nasty. Turns out, they’re just like meat if it was a fruit and I dig that.
Same! I hated guacamole as a kid.
Then all the Avocado toast jokes happened and tried it, and it was great!
Then I started making my own guacamole/eating the good shit in texmex/Mexican restaurants and realized I hated that nasty supermarket national brand guac.
I didn’t hate it but I was ambivalent. Then one day I was at work and my boss was like “I’m craving guacamole, go get these ingredients so I can make us some.” So I did and his recipe was excellent. I have been an avocado junkie ever since.
If they live long enough, every person eventually develops a taste for pickles.
Mushy shitty pickles is not the way.
Crispy, fresh pickles of the appropriate size is the way. There is nothing like it.
