Fish. It wasn’t until I grew up and started eating at restaurants that I realized my mother was doing it all wrong and fish should not smell or taste like raw chicken left in the sun over a hot weekend.
Mom was a steady cook, but gourmet she wasn’t. It took marrying the Most Perfect Woman In The World to understand what foods I was missing.
eta: And what jayjay said.
Olives. The only kind I’d ever had were those awful black canned things you see on stadium “nachos” or pizza. Fishy-tasting salt bombs. Then GF started to have me taste deli olives, green ones stuffed with interesting things. Now I love them (though not the black canned ones).
I was in my 50s before I willingly ate a Brussels sprout. Hated cauliflower as a kid but I’ve always liked broccoli. Also hated peas and cooked carrots, although I liked raw carrots. Now I like all of these.
Like many non-Indonesians, I used to hate emping, a crunchy potato chip-like treat made from smashed melinjo. I found them weird and bitter. (They are both, at least to the uninitiated palate.)
Then one day perhaps 20 years ago, I was walking by a small storefront in central Java, and the fragrance of freshly fried emping wafted out. “I have to have some, they smell delicious!” I said, even though I had been turning up my nose at emping for the past year or so.
It was an epiphany, and I have loved emping ever since. I wish they were more widely available outside Indonesia, so others could snack on this delightful treat. If you ever get a chance, give them a try! Emping manis are the sweet ones;* emping pedas* are chili-flavored.
I hated tomatoes for the first several decades of my life. Raw tomatoes that is. They tasted disgusting, looked disgusting and felt disgusting. Then something changed and I started to tolerate them. Now I kind of like them. Kind of.
When I was a kid and a teenager I hated steak. I would never order it, even at a steak house (I would get the chicken dish) and I didn’t like it when my parents made it. In my 20s something changed and I loved them. Still do. Had one tonight even
I grew up with green olives only because my parents didn’t like black olives. Now I prefer the reverse, although I’m not a big olive eater. I do cook with olive oil and indulge in the Paul Newman brand because I think it’s the best.
I never liked rice or mashed potatoes either, because all I ever had was Minute Rice and Potato Buds. “Real” mashed potatoes and non-Minute Rice are yummy.
Lamb. Before I took up with my current partner-in-crime, I was convinced that the flesh of sheep was not a wholesome food for human beings. Now I certainly know better.
Oatmeal. I used to abhor the stuff; as I grow older I’ve come to realize that a bowl of hot oatmeal with brown sugar and cream and perhaps a scanty handful of raisins is a fine thing indeed. Be this as it may, my favorite cereal will always be Coco Puffs
Chicken livers. I gag at the notion of eating the livers of our fellow mammals (except for liverwurst and braunschweiger), but some time between the ages of 21 and 40, I was turned on to a plate of fried chicken livers with rice. It was simple, and sumptuous, and it made a beliver out of me.
