Foods you came to like

Cafe Society
1

What are foods you initially disliked, but now enjoy?

For me, it’s really weird: Peanut butter. I used to be actively repulsed by peanut butter. The mere smell of it used to turn my stomach, and I couldn’t seriously contemplate eating it. I have absolutely no idea where this aversion came from, but, from when I was very young up through the end of high school, it was quite strong.

Then, not long after I graduated high school, I stopped being sickened by it and, therefore, grew to enjoy it, as I enjoy most foods. (Really, I’m not a picky eater. I’m the polar opposite of a picky eater.) I’ll happily eat multiple peanut butter sandwiches a day, if that’s what happens to be reasonable, and I’ll eat peanut butter right out of a jar, if I have a little bit that’s not worth saving. Again, I have no idea why the aversion suddenly disappeared. I was certainly never pressured to eat peanut butter.

It was around that time my tolerance for spicy food suddenly went from “absolutely none” to “hey, Tabasco’s actually pretty good” and, soon after, to “sriracha sauce actually has flavor!”, which is where I’m at now. Maybe my olfactory sense got turned down a couple notches after I turned eighteen.

2

Olives.

I despised them well into adulthood, then one day I randomly decided I like them. Weirdly, I was nowhere near an olive when I decided this. Ever since, I love them lots.

I cannot explain this.
mmm

3

As a kid I didn’t like tomatoes. Tomato sauce was cool, and ketchup, but I didn’t like tomatoes. Now I love them.

I was also kinda picky about nuts. I liked peanuts, cashews and pistachios. When I was in college, I discovered that almonds were pretty cool. At some point macadamia nuts became pretty groovy. About 3 years ago I discovered that i like filberts. And about 1 month ago I suddenly liked pecans. I’ve prolly eaten 4 pounds of pecans in the last few weeks.

I still don’t care for olives tho.

ETA: Oh, and black pepper. 4 or 5 years ago, I suddenly developed a taste for black pepper.

4

I never liked cheese as a kid. It was only when I learned that there were cheeses other than pasteurized process orange industrial sludge that I started appreciating it.

I also disliked cherries. Didn’t hate them, but didn’t particularly care for them. But one day in college someone in the class started eating chocolate covered cherries. As soon as the class ended, I went out and bought some and they’re still a favorite. And I like cherries in all forms now, too.

I went through a phase of not liking any kind of nut. Eventually, I changed my mind and like most of them.

5

Yoghurt. I just never cared for it. Tasted like something gone off, to me!

But the last couple of years various health/medication combos have resulted in my ingesting it. I started with lassi/smoothies, not SO bad! Now I’m cool with fruity yoghurt just in a dish.

I don’t mind it now, to be honest. It calms my tummy when it’s feeling dodgy. Also, I’m currently taking a med 6 times a day, which specifies ‘with food’, so it’s yoghurt to the rescue again!

6

Tomatoes and tomato sauce. Someone made me a turkey club sandwich, when I was in college, and I was surprised to suddenly enjoy the tomatoes. I also only grew to like peanut butter as an adult (then I developed an allergy, so now I can’t have it anymore).

7

I hated Swiss Cheese as a kid. It’s not my favorite but I enjoy it now.

I absolutely HATED tomatoes, not just as a kid but as an adult too. Their insides were gross and seeing one on a plate ruined everything it touched. In my later adult years I started eating better and decided to include them in sandwiches for more veggies. I found I didn’t mind them so much. that let to eating them in salads and now I kind of like them.

As a kid and a teenager I hated cheese on eggs. I would buy frozen breakfast sandwiches to microwave and I would pull them apart while still frozen to get the cheese off before I heated them. I also would avoid egg mcmuffins for a long time because they had cheese (I stuck with the sausage biscuits because they did not). Now when I eat fried eggs they feel unfinished if they don’t have some kind of cheese on them. Fried eggs with cheddar is literally what I just ate before posting this.

8

I flipped the switch on tomatoes and beans in my teens.

9

Brussels sprouts. Despised them for ages, then discovered the joy of well made sprouts, especially if garlic, olive oil and salt is ued in the process. Bacon and brown sugar is good too.

Mushrooms. Despised them until well into my mid 20’s. Then I had some decent shiitake shrooms, and that was all it took. Now they’re all good. The non-poisonous ones, anyway.

10

I hated cilantro the first few times I had it (early 90s) and then got addicted to it. Genetics be damned. I usually have a bunch in the drawer at any given time, and if it doesn’t go with anything I’m making for dinner, then I just add to my lunch sandwiches, soup, or salad.

I, too, didn’t like tomatoes much growing up. That included spaghetti sauce and the like. (Part of this was due to a horrible stomach flu incident when I was 5, but I digress). Then I discovered I didn’t mind raw tomatoes if you rinsed the seeds out, and now I’ll eat tomatoes pretty much any old way. If they’re at all better than the generic supermarket variety, nothing beats a tomato and mayo on toast, seeds and all.

Fish and eggs. I blame Mom for this one. She didn’t like them, so never cooked them. So I assumed I didn’t much like them, either, other then fried smelt and eggs for breakfast at Grandma’s house every now and then, fried walleye or roughy over a campstove if Dad caught it, and shrimp. I don’t think I even tried tuna salad till I was a teenager, but I liked it immediately. Same with catfish–never had any till college, but my dorm fried up messes of it on Fridays and I was hooked. I’ve since branched out to most seafood (love eel and octopus, wish it were more available), and will try any fish, though I don’t go out of my way for it in general. I also never tried sushi till about a decade ago. It’s pretty good. Though in the Midwest, unless I head into Chicago, I find that the “creative” junky sushi are often a better bet than the simple nigiri-type. Mmm, fried soft-shell crab roll. Sea urchin can F right off, however.

As for eggs…well, as long as the yolk taste isn’t overpowering, I’ll be happy to cook and/or eat. I’ll devour my weight in good egg salad or devilled eggs in no time flat. It’s weird, because I love a strongly-flavored yellow mayonnaise, but still can’t eat more than a couple bites of custard or derivative (pie, flan, etc.) if it tastes of egg.

Speaking of eggs…eggplant. Irrational dislike as a kid. I still have little use for this vegetable, since I find it tastes of absolutely nothing, but I’ll eat it. I usually sub zucchini in recipes, though (much to my husband’s dismay, as he grew up with a lot of Sicilian cooking) since it at least has a flavor.

ETA: Kind of a weird one. Ketchup. I find myself craving it every now and then over the past few years, whereas I’d never touch it before (unless it came on a hamburger or something). I have no idea.

11

Salmon. Got a bad batch at about 12 (puked up breast milk…) and couldn’t stand the very word for many years. Was given some nice steaks, grilled them… a staple ever since.

12

breast milk at age 12 . . .

:confused:

Ummmmmm . . .

:eek:

What???

13

As a kid, I couldn’t even stand the smell of steamed shrimp; had to leave the table.

14

Thanks for writing my post for me. ‘smile’

15

Seafood
Olives
Spicy food

16

*Yogurt: still prefer mine with vanilla, and topped with fruit/granola
*Green olives: never cared for them until I discovered Castelvetrano olives.
*Cream cheese: had a bad experience as a child when I took a big bite of what I thought was ice cream and wouldn’t touch the stuff until I was well into adulteryhood.
*Scotch: always tasted like burned rubber bands to me.

17

Marmite. I told my daughters how nasty it was so they begged me to buy some to prove it when we saw some in the international foods section of the local supermarket. I made some toast with butter and just a tiny bit of Marmite for them to try. One managed to get it down vowing never to put that in her mouth again and the other simply spit it onto the floor.

I kept the jar for myself and am almost done with it. I even stick my finger in and just eat it that way. I may even buy another even though it is extremely expensive ($7 for a 4 oz jar here). It is definitely nasty as hell but oddly appealing for some reason.

***If you don’t know what Marmite is, it is yeast slurry mixed with pure salt like something you get when you clean out a brewery. British people seem to love it but hardly anyone else does. It is almost impossible to use little enough because it is so strong tasting and salty. The closest common approximation is popping a beef bullion cube in your mouth but I have been known to do that too.

They also begged me to buy Moxie soda as well because I told them how disgusting it was. My oldest daughter got some New England street cred because she claimed that she actually liked it and finished more than one. It wasn’t quite as bad as I recall. I finished a whole can but it still won’t be moving in to the ‘good’ list. At least I didn’t throw up or get nightmares.

18

Relish, it’s strange because I like pickles but always on the side not on a sandwich. Recently my daughter convinced me to put some relish on a burger. Not bad and good enough I would do it again.

19

When I was a child, I hated all forms of cheese. As an adult, I learned that it’s mainly sharp cheddar that I hate. (It is my mother’s favorite, and the only kind she would buy.) Milder cheeses are not bad, and some of the hideously expensive ones are quite good.

When my town’s first sushi bar opened, I had to force myself to try it. Now I love it.

Ikura. (a.k.a. salmon roe) On one hand, it’s caviar. On the other hand, it’s bait. Once I got over that dilemma, I liked it.

Spicy food. Growing up in the southwest, not loving chile made me a weirdo. Gradually, I came to appreciate Chinese mustard, Indian curry, Sichuan barbecue. I have recently learned to like pozole and tamales. (Only with red chile, though. I still hate green.)

20

I was once one of the cilantro haters who went ‘ew ew ew’ at even the mention of it. Yuck phooey! For some unknown reason, I have learned to love it, crave it, and have gone so far as to grow a half-barrel of cilantro on the deck in the summer. And freeze the little leaves in water in an ice cube tray.

Can’t think of anything else. There are several foods I have learned to dislike in the last few years, but that’s another subject.