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.
I used to only eat mild moldy cheese if at all then at 16 my girlfriend of the time got ugly ass blue cheese and said “just put jam on it” I tried it and it’s was so good. I’ve liked moldy cheese ever since, extra moldy/strong cheese are all good. There’s always a ratio of jam to cheese that tastes good, that ratio also keeps going down towards zero.
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 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.
Recently, oysters and Indian food!
Always thought oysters were saltboogers, then a seafood bar opened down the street and the owners insisted I try a few on the house when I was drinking one evening. It was perfection of salt and sea. Now one of my favorite drunk foods!
Also, I’ve been hesitant of Indian food since I sampled the “cooking” of an Indian roommate a buddy used to have. Last year, a buddy brought me to an Indian place for my birthday after a night out, and we split a tikka masala. I’ve been back a dozen times since, and might have some Indian food for lunch soon.
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 don’t know if this fits but orange juice. I always disliked it even though I thought it smelled great and everyone else loves it, plus I like oranges. Every year or two I would try orange juice again hoping to like it, I really wanted to like it!! After three decades of trying to like orange juice I tried some from a brand I don’t usually buy for my family and it happened! It was so good! I drank like three glasses and got a bad acid stomach ache lol but I’ve liked it ever since, it still hurts my stomach if I drink too much though
I can definitely understand this. There are so many different brands of orange juice that taste wildly different from each other. I’m pretty picky and over time I’ve learned which brands I like and don’t like, but I can completely see how you had that experience.
I’m not sure I have ever had a time a food at all.
Has Anyone Really Been Far Even as Decided to Use Even Go Want to do Look More Like?
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.
Kenya AA…
I always drank coffee just for the caffeine, but I wanted to cut down on the cream and sugar. So when I’d order the brew of the day, whatever it was, I started taking a sip before drowning it in other flavors.
Buuuut, then I’d go ahead and dump some stuff in it, because I still didn’t like the taste. Until one day, I got a cup and took a sip… and another sip… and decided that THIS cup didn’t need a bunch of stuff in it.
Now I pretty much never add stuff to my coffee( I’ve learned what origins and roasts I like, so I can stay away from coffee I don’t like - and if it’s nasty, it still gets the cream and sugar treatment…
Because life’s too short to drink nasty coffee.
one time a popsicle turned me bi
My mum made the grossest fish. Idk what she did to it or what type of fish it was but it stank up the whole house, tasted worse, and was dry as fuck. I avoided all fish for years, still don’t really like fish and chips as an Aussie.
Went fine dining once and one of the courses was a piece of fish with toasted quinoa and Geraldton wax. It was one of my favourite dishes of the fourteen courses. Absolutely delicious. Then I went to Scotland and tried Cullen skink and ended up having that multiple times throughout my trip.
I’ve realised I just hate bad fish, and that mum wasn’t as good a cook everyone said she was -and everyone saying that is even worse.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
