I used to dislike most food period, unless we ate out or at a friend’s or neighbor’s house. I’m dead serious. It looked bad, tasted bad, and smelled bad. I was quite scrawny. It turns out my mother didn’t know how to cook, period. Eating at her mother’s was no better.
Thankfully I was able to break free of those chains and I became, and still am, a wide-pallete, certifiable food freak.
Another vote for mushrooms - as a kid the smell of them cooking would make me retch, and now I love them. As noted above, your tastes change as you get older, which leads to a side question: do you go out of your way to eat foods that you know you don’t like, just in case you like them now? Mussels (and for that matter, shellfish in general) is something that I’m actively working on - our visit to Brittany last summer was jokingly known as “Operation Seafood”. I’m making progress but we’re not there yet - what keeps me going is the though that I might have spent my entire life just assuming that I didn’t like mushrooms.
There are also a host of things that I didn’t care for as a kid, mostly the usual greens (spinach, cabbage etc) all of which i love now. And there is an additional category of foods I was never exposed to as a kid, which I learned to like when I went to college and subsequently. There are basically two sub-categories of those foods
[ul]
[li]foods which, if you could buy them at all in a small remote town in the north west of England, would have been out of the family’s price range (avocados, aubergines, salmon, crab, duck - though many of these are no longer the “luxury” items they once were); and[/li]
[li]foods which were foreign or otherwise deeply suspicious (all pasta apart from something which went by the name of spaghetti bolognese, all Chinese, all Indian apart from a home made beef curry with sultanas in it, almost everything that included garlic, “spicy food” etc etc)[/li][/ul]
After I left home, I had a lot to learn to like.
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Spinach. To be fair though, the parental units only ever cooked that awful stuff in a can.
Yep, mushrooms. In fact, if you fry them in steak juices I now love them.
Guacamole. It’s not that I didn’t like the taste of it; I refused to try it at all because I thought that weird mushy green stuff looked gross. At some point I tried it as an adult and discovered guacamole and avocados in general are actually good.
Curry. My primary school back in the 1970s used to serve up disgusting green gloop called “curry” - think dreadful cheap meat and WWII-surplus curry powder, badly cooked. I loathed it with a passion, and by association the very concept of curry.
Fast forward to first year at university: out drinking with a bunch of fellow first-years who all wanted to go and grab a curry. I went along, slightly dreading the prospect, but not wanting to make a fuss.
Reader: one of the best meals of my life - a total revelation.
Curry. My primary school back in the 1970s used to serve up disgusting green gloop called “curry” - think dreadful cheap meat and WWII-surplus curry powder, badly cooked. I loathed it with a passion, and by association the very concept of curry.
Fast forward to first year at university: out drinking with a bunch of fellow first-years who all wanted to go and grab a curry. I went along, slightly dreading the prospect, but not wanting to make a fuss.
Reader: one of the best meals of my life - a total revelation.
As a kid I hated sauerkraut now I eat it till I can’t stand it no more.
I used to eat cheese like a mouse and then one day decided I didn’t like it no more. I went years and years and years without eating any kind of cheese that wasn’t melted. Pizza, cheeseburgers, and the such was fine but not even on a sub unless it was cooked. then while on vacation I was hungry one night and the only thing in the fridge was a block of Colby-Jack…I LOVE CHEESE!!!
Mustard-always thought I hated it up to a couple years ago. Nope it’s delicious!
coca-cola, couldn’t stand the stuff, or other fizzy pop. Often drink the Diet stuff, now.
LHOD, posting so I don’t have to.
My mother always cooked the frozen spinach, and she did it quite well. She made a very simple sauce made of, I think, mayonnaise and milk that complemented it perfectly.
Buttermilk. My Daddy drank buttermilk. He encouraged us to drink it. My brothers loved it. (I suspect they would eat or drink anything as youngsters)
I hated it.
One day I drank a thimble full. Few days later a shot glass full. And, did that for awhile.
If my carbs are good I can drink a juice glass full now. I like it’s sour/sweet taste.
I used to think avocados tasted bad because guacamole tasted bad. A while back, I ate a slice of avocado, and it really wasn’t bad at all. Turns out cilantro is what I don’t like about most guacamoles. Gee, who’d a thunk it?
Greek wife, again. I cook fresh spinach down in a couple tablespoons of water, drain it, and dress it with olive oil, salt, and a few squeezes of fresh lemon juice. Magnificent.
My sainted momma did the same thing, but dressed it with salt and a splash of vinegar, then laid slices of hard boiled egg over it. Also excellent, sort of a variation on eggs Florentine.
Mushrooms.
I don’t even know if I really didn’t like them or that my younger self for some reason decided I didn’t. They are now an ingredient in pretty much all of my favorite dishes. I really don’t remember when the turning point happened.
Since mushrooms have been mentioned a couple times…
I used to think I hated mushrooms.
Turns out, I only hate BUTTON mushrooms.
Their virtually complete lack of flavour and very unpleasant texture disgust me to the point that if I accidentally get one I have to spit it out, just like if I get a bone or piece of gristle. (I’m not proud of this, but…I am seriously unable to swallow it.)
But a good mushroom, which actually tastes like something, and has a good texture?
Yeah, those I like.
Lima beans. Hated, hated, *hated *them as a kid. Had to pick them out of the frozen mixed vegetables and make a separate pile on the plate (for the trash can).
But at some point as an adult I realized lima beans were not only edible, but incredibly delicious.
Tuna fish was sort of the same way for me. I love it as an adult. Didn’t really *hate *it as a kid, but it sure wasn’t going to win any contests. Now I eat tuna all the time, in all sorts of ways.
Mustard. I am gradually getting used to stronger mustards, but I love honey mustard and I’m pretty good with dijonaise.
I’m 63 years old and until a couple of years ago, I wanted nothing to do with Blue Cheese. I couldn’t even stomach the smell. But now, I can’t get enough of it. Also pickled stuff. I’m adding pickled hot jalapeños to everything these days.