Tonight I was at a party that a jar of green olives had been invited to. I despise these things (but I’m a huge fan of black olives, yum!). But for some reason as I looked at everyone’s martinis and the jar of olives, I got this overwhelming craving to eat one. I knew I would hate it, I know exactly what they taste like as I have forced myself to eat them on occasion when they are in salads and such and I have never even come close to liking it.
But the craving was so strong I finally ate one, and it tasted exactly as I expected it to taste… but for some reason I really liked it this time! It’s crazy! The flavor was just as I had always remembered it, but now I was really digging it. I probably ate close to a dozen of the things tonight, and even writing this post is making my mouth water, thinking about them.
Many times.
Mushrooms, olives, hot peppers, fish (OK the fish is an outlier - turns out my mom had no idea how to cook fish and it’s actually really good when it doesn’t smell and taste like rotten beef).
Tex Mex – my parents took me on a vacation thru Texas, Big Bend, San Antonino and into Mexico. I wouldn’t eat Tex Mex.
Until the very last day of the trip. Loved it! I missed out on some really good meals. Tex Mex is kinda unique from other Mexican restaurants. Tamales are my favorite. I crave them. Hard to find fresh ones. Most Mexican places just serve tacos and burritos.
Aldi’s sometimes sells tamales, beef or chicken, frozen, wrapped in corn husks. They’re really good for a quick meal!
The only other tamales I ever had were horrible Hormel canned things, like sawdust logs in icky sauce. But I was reading about home-made tamales at a food site and when I saw them in Aldi’s, thought, well, let’s try them. A real step up from the canned, though the home-made are probably much better.
Sliced, pickled beets like you find in a salad bar. Blech, right? Hated them, right up to that moment when I had to take some and then loved them. Weird!
A little lesser scale and slower, but I’ll go with salad. I never…NEVER…ate salad. Then I had to change my diet and find something to replace my constant pasta meals. I tried a chef salad, and liked it. Now, I eat them four or five days a week.
people develop likes and dislikes over time. there is stuff i gagged on as a kid that i could eat platefuls of now. there is stuff that i ate platefuls of a kid that i will pass on beyond a small portion.
Yes! And it was green olives for me, too! They used to taste like semen, in the worst way possible. Now…they still taste like semen, but I like it!
(I just dragged this thread into the gutter, didn’t I? Oh well…that really is what they taste like…)
Had a bad experience with salmon in my early teens (staying at someone’s camp, had undercooked/possibly bad salmon steaks, everyone sick for two days with a creek and a one-holer…) After that, the very word or image of a swimming salmon or something salmon-colored made me queasy.
I was maybe 35 when someone gave us four frozen salmon steaks and I carefully made them, ready to feed them to the dogs and go get burgers.
Salmon is only limited in our rotation by market price now. Mmm, sounds good.
I never cared for cherries as a kid. One day in college, someone in the class brought some chocolate covered ones to eat. As soon as the class ended, I went to the campus store and bought some; they instantly became one of my favorites. I also love the fruit when I can get it.
Yeah I know there are some foods that you can get used to, and learn to like over time. Sometimes this is acquiring a taste for something. Sometimes it seems like the flavor of the food has literally changed from when you were a kid, and now tastes good. But that’s not what happened to me. I didn’t acquire a taste for green olives the way people do with things like coffee or beer or stuff that “everyone” hates at first.
But I’m talking about something different. Like something just snapped in my brain. I can’t explain why I got that damn craving for green olives, and can’t explain why the same exact flavor I’ve always remembered is now extremely desirable to me. It’s the weirdest damn thing.
Glad to see at least a few other people experienced this same thing though, and even with the same food.
I am trying to eat more nutritiously and am forcing myself to try things I had to eat as a kid and didn’t like. Spinach (raw and cooked) I have come around on, but I still hate brussels sprouts. I’m told to try them pan fried or roasted in the oven so I haven’t given up on them completely, just on the frozen kind.
Cooked greens (kale, turnip greens, collards) are a staple in my family, growing up in the south. I hated them as a kid, then sometime in my teens felt compelled to try them again, and loved them. Also, beer, I didn’t like all through college and my 20s, then sometime around age 30 I started craving it occasionally. I still am not a beer lover but I still get the occasional craving and get some, then I’m usually meh afterwards. Maybe on the road to liking it though, definitely like it more than I used to and am figuring out types that I like.
Not really, only because there are damn few foods I ever disliked in the first place. But you’ll be the first to know if I develop a taste for haggis slathered in Limburger cheese.
No, I haven’t experienced what the OP was talking about. But I have avoided yogurt for decades because everything about it besides the taste is unappetizing. But then I went to a Turkish restaurant and got some Cacik by mistake because the server highly recommended it and I didn’t understand her explanation but I trusted her. It was amazing even though it totally looks like the yogurt it is (i.e. gelatinous, gloppy, glistening, and a lot of other unappetizing “g” adjective.)
I’m still not gonna eat yogurt from a plastic cup, just hearing people glop the stuff out is enough to ease my appetite, but I’d try cacik again.
It happened to me when I was a kid. I always ate the meat sauce separately from the spaghetti. Then one night my mom heated some leftovers up and was eating it. I watched her eating and suddenly really, really wanted spaghetti with the sauce on it.
Mmmmm spaghetti and sauce. I have some left over in the fridge right now.