I hated... until I...

[ludja]

Two foods that I can enjoy now after epiphanies (although I still don't go out of my way to eat them) are beets. My first extraordinary experience with them was in Washington, D.C. at the restaurant Obelisk where I had an amazing pasta with beets.

ahh, beets. I forgot about that. Disclaimer that my mom was and is a great cook--but the only way she made beets was "harvard beets" using canned specimens. Very sweet and gooey--I didn't hate these as a kid b/c they were sweet but wouldn't like that dish now. Now I love well prepared beets.

As an aside, just had an incredible beet dish during a holiday trip to Philly at Dmitri's (great restaurant). It was simply perfectly cooked beets in pretty big chunks with lemon, s&p, oil and red onions....yum.

[GG Mora]

The answer to that would be, um, just about everything: garlic (???!!), onions, mushrooms, peppers, eggplant, beets, brussels sprouts, cabbage, any lettuce besides iceberg, any dressing besides bottled Italian, lamb, duck, goose, any organ meat, any seafood other than scallops, lobster or flounder/sole/cod/haddock, any "Italian" food other than Chef Boyardee or Franco-American, any "Chinese" food other than La Choy, any "Mexican" food other than Old El Paso, and so on and so on, but the big perplexing one – and perhaps Sconzo and I were separated at birth – was that I wouldn't eat any cheese that wasn't Velveeta (or similar cheezoid product) and melted. I've overcome every one of these aversions, or perhaps I should say "reversed" since I now embrace and crave all of the above. You should have seen me licking the Epoisses off my fingers a few weeks ago.

Exception: bluefish. :gack:

Edited to add: the mushrooms that changed my mind were psilocybe cubensis, grown with great attention to detail in a friend's dorm room.

Edited January 9, 2004 by GG Mora (log)

[hwilson41]

I've overcome every one of these aversions, or perhaps I should say "reversed" since I now embrace and crave all of the above. You should have seen me licking the Epoisses off my fingers a few weeks ago.

Exception: bluefish.  :gack:

GG;

If you can find it, try bluefish after it's been smoked over Pecan. You'll think you've died and gone to heaven .

THW

[KatieLoeb]

As an aside, just had an incredible beet dish during a holiday trip to Philly at Dmitri's (great restaurant). It was simply perfectly cooked beets in pretty big chunks with lemon, s&p, oil and red onions....yum.

Ah yes. The beets at Dmitri's. Fabulous. Did you try the sugar snap peas in tomato sauce with crumbled feta on top? My other favorite vegetable on their menu and something I invariably order when I'm there, along with the beets and the grilled octopus. If vegetables tasted like that all the time, children would eat them .

[hillvalley]

When I was little I hated gefiltefish. My grandmother made it from scratch, heads and all, although the fish didn't live in the bathtub. One Passover, when I was six or seven, I looked at my mother's plate and decided it looked good. Ate three or four pieces that year and have ever since.

Until a couple of years ago.....

Just as suddenly as I started liking gefiltefish, I stopped. But Grandma, who is very old and the only Grandparent left, still makes it just for me and my cousin. So I eat three or four pieces. With lots and lots of horseradish.

[Suzanne F]

Growing up I hated borscht. I loved the pretty magenta color and the pink it turned once the sour cream was added. But I thought it tasted nasty.

Fast forward to the year 2000, I'm in London and the restaurant we were eating in served a beet salad. I tasted the beets and lo and behold - I liked them. So, I decided to add beets to my diet. And that led to my deciding to try assorted beet based recipes. This meant borscht. And I liked it.

Are you sure you're not my long-lost (younger) sister?

I liked the borscht just fine; it was the cooked-out beets I hated. (Waste not, want not ) Then when I got my first paid restaurant job in 1996, one of the antipasti I had to make was roast beets with red onion and fresh basil, tossed with lemon juice and olive oil. Where have you been all my life!!!

[foodie52]

As a teenager in boarding school in England, I HATED gooseberries ( always served stewed) and rhubarb( ditto).

Now I love them both when I can get them.

[Pan]

Man do I love rhubarb! I didn't really love it until I had tartes rhubarbe in France, though. I could never see the point of the rhubarb in the strawberry-rhubarb pies I had in New York in my childhood, but when you feature the rhubarb by itself in a tart as a tart fruit (no pun intended), it is fabulous!

[Mudpuppie]

But...what about fresh okra? Is there anything that can be done with okra beyond pickling it???

This is me drooling....

Slice the okra up, about 1/4" to 1/2" thick. (Make sure it's dry when you slice. If it comes in contact with water you'll be slimed.) Coat in cornmeal or flour. I often use polenta. Pan fry in just a little oil until crispy. After the okra is cooked enough so that it's no longer wet (i.e., potentially slimy), you can add onions and garlic. Don't add them too early, though, because NO WATER. Yummmm.

Sorry, off-topic. But any chance to proselytize about okra. (Actually, I can't think of anything I didn't like as a kid but like now. I must have had good taste back then.)

[Pan]

Mudpuppie, check out the okra thread.

[Mudpuppie]

Thanks, now I'm REALLY drooling!

[KarenS]

Hhmm... I did not learn to like oysters or liver (and pate) until my early twenties. Both items I first tasted grilled- then I had sauteed Olympia oysters (yum). I then learned about foie gras (my very favorite thing now!). I never liked cauliflower- it was always overcooked with a cheese sauce. Now I really like it roasted with olive oil. When I was young I also did not like squid or clams (they scared me). I now love both! I did not like eggs until I was a teenager.

[SobaAddict70]

Garlic and chiles, without a doubt.

I was the one who picked out all the black and brown bits in my mom's famous Chinese fried rice. Garlic? Stay away from me!!!

I was the one who gagged at the mere mention of jalapenos. Spicy food? Forget it. Salsa was out.

Funny how tastes change over time.

Soba

[Suzanne F]

Soba!? You??? I can't believe it. Wow, isn't getting older getting better?

[Cusina]

Who said nothing good ever came of the Sixties?

<ahem> - I'm not that old.

It was actually the '80s...

Of course not. I thought you were precocious.

Too Funny!

I didn't like fish or red meat much before leaving home. Even chicken was iffy untill I realized you could cook it in a way it wasn't bone dry.

You all are giving me hope for my daughter. She is SO picky about food right now. Onions, parsley, spinach, tomatoes and more. It's all icky. Hopefully she won't require an acid trip to make the change though!

[Pan]

I think most of us change our tastes somewhat between childhood and adulthood, and do it without dropping acid.

[KatieLoeb]

Just as suddenly as I started liking gefiltefish, I stopped. But Grandma, who is very old and the only Grandparent left, still makes it just for me and my cousin. So I eat three or four pieces. With lots and lots of horseradish.

I've always been of the belief that Gefilte fish is just a delivery system for getting the horseradish to your mouth without eating big spoons of horseradish on its own. You'd never eat the Gefilte fish plain! Eeeeewwwww...

Same thing goes for escargot. If we didn't look silly drinking the Garlic-Herb-Pernod butter out of a rocks glass, we'd never eat the erasers it comes with!

[wesza]

The Foods that I wasn't able to eat as a kid are still the same ones that I don't care to eat as a Senior Citizen.

Schav [Jewish Style Sour Sorel Soup]

Pickled Corn Meal Mamalega [my step father ate it until he got Ulcers]

Buttermilk [Can't drink it, but like it in everything else]

Cream Cheese [Okay in Cooking or Desserts, still can't eat it on a Bagel]

Lumpy Oat Meal Cereal [ Okay in Cookies, like Oats but hate as a Cereal]

Green Olives [Never tasted any I that I liked]

Pickled Pigs Feet [Cause I had to eat them or else]

Love Ham and Bacon but can't eat them on a Bagel ? [never kept Kosher]

Butterscotch [Never liked it, still don't]

I've somehow managed to try my best to enjoy everthing else and hope to keep trying. Still not successfull in appreciating the nuances of many varieties of Cheeses and everyday there seem to be more available at the Marketplace but at the prices being charged per pound I feel that i'm safe unless it becomes a project.

Irwin

[Pan]

I've never liked snails, but homemade gefilte fish can be good. Tell me the truth, though, when you were a kid, did you use to think that there was a type of fish swimming around somewhere that was called a "gefilte fish"? I did.

[KatieLoeb]

I've never liked snails, but homemade gefilte fish can be good. Tell me the truth, though, when you were a kid, did you use to think that there was a type of fish swimming around somewhere that was called a "gefilte fish"? I did. 

Yes I did.

There's now one of these:

on the back of my car...

[Pan]

That's funny!

[ludja]

As an aside, just had an incredible beet dish during a holiday trip to Philly at Dmitri's (great restaurant). It was simply perfectly cooked beets in pretty big chunks with lemon, s&p, oil and red onions....yum.

Ah yes. The beets at Dmitri's. Fabulous. Did you try the sugar snap peas in tomato sauce with crumbled feta on top? My other favorite vegetable on their menu and something I invariably order when I'm there, along with the beets and the grilled octopus. If vegetables tasted like that all the time, children would eat them .

Thanks for the tips for next time on the sugar snap peas and grilled octopus.

They didn't have the octopus the night we were there.... Had to *settle* for grilled Greek style bluefish...

[Suzanne F]

I've never liked snails, but homemade gefilte fish can be good. Tell me the truth, though, when you were a kid, did you use to think that there was a type of fish swimming around somewhere that was called a "gefilte fish"? I did.

I can tell you with absolute belief that it used to swim in my grandmother's bathtub. Nowadays -- ??? I suppose it must have migrated.

[tanabutler]

Growing up in the Deep South assured that the only fresh vegetables one would ever have would be corn on the cob or tomatoes in the summertime. Otherwise, it was "boil the shit out of frozen or canned" veggies. I disliked many foods as a child for the simple reason that I realize, "No one really knew how to cook good food." I dislike few foods now (brussels sprouts, liver, raw onions or garlic, which burn my mouth for days).

One epiphany I remember was having lunch at a "lady food" place: the Swan House in downtown Atlanta. Our math teacher took my best friend and me to lunch there, and ordered a yellow squash casserole. It was very traditional Southern fare, with cheese and onions and, I think, crackers. But it was fabulous, and it inspired me to learn to cook.

Another healing moment came when attending a workshop in Nashville in the mid-Eighties. Our instructions for lunch were to order something we'd never ever otherwise eat. I ordered a Reuben sandwich and a dark beer. Oh, God, it was so good.

I doubt I would have had the same delight had I ordered the vilest food on earth (that would be liver, which I still hate, never having been a fan of animal diapers). I wish I had $5 for every time someone said, "You'd like liver the way I cook it." No, I wouldn't. Trust me. (I must say, I've had decent foie gras at some of the farm dinners I've attended, but it's nothing I would ever order.)

I have an aversion to olives, though I continue to try them on at least a yearly basis. I admit this to people as being my own genetic deficiency. I know, it's a crime and a sin not to like olives. Maybe I should finally bite the bullet and drop LSD.

Carolyn, your story reminded me of something similar. I never liked coffee, yet my mother often said, "You really should learn to drink it because someday, you're going to be somewhere and that's all there will be to drink." Fast forward to purple-haired party waitress days at TGI Friday's in the early Eighties. Our heroine awakens, bedraggled and hungover, at the home of the tall waiter for whom she has lusted for months. What is there to drink? Nothing but coffee. Tall, sexy waiter brings a cup to the bedroom, steaming and sweet (the coffee wasn't bad, either). It was my first cup of coffee, and I loved it.

Edited January 10, 2004 by tanabutler (log)

[clifford]

I was never an adventurous eater as a child, and the line(s) of demarcation for me were based on two principles: motion, and fourth grade science class.

Anything that moved as I was trying to get it onto my fork, spoon, spork, whatever was out of the question. This eliminated jello (watch it jiggle, see it shimmer...HATED IT), peas, linguine and spaghetti, etc. Basically, if it was hard to get on my utensil, and hard to keep on my utensil, it wasn'y crossing my lips.

In fourth grade science class I learned about trichinosis, and the thought of a worm growing inside of my belly ruined pig for me. In all forms. Same with mushrooms. Once I found out their function in nature is to decompose DEAD THINGS, I couldn't understand why anyone would want to eat that. And you could not convince me that the egg yolk was anything other than a liquefied baby chicken. Off my list.

Then one day in 1989, I awoke from a three day heroin coma craving bacon and a mushroom/pea omelette. The rest is history.