Skip Navigation
93 comments

  • Mushrooms - I once puked them up on the table when my mom made me eat them...canned mushrooms FTW! I now, of course, can not get enough of them - sautéed, baked, sliced/raw on a salad...gimme some fungus already!!

    • I get so jealous when people post pictures of their locally owned supermarket selling chanterelles and morels... I'm just sitting here like a chump eating button mushrooms which are apparently the only mushrooms that exist according to all the store owners in my city. ;-;

  • Olives. Growing up poor in New Zealand in the 1950s/60s my only exposure to olives was in American magazines. You'd see a martini with a green olive in it. It looked sophisticated and was surely delicious.

    Fast forward to my parents' silver wedding anniversary, which they celebrated with a family meal at a very fancy Italian restaurant. I would have been ten or so, first time in a restaurant. I was thrilled to see dishes of green olives on the table. At last, I'd get to eat one!

    I put that olive in my mouth and tasted something overwhelmingly vile, alien, disgusting. I faked a coughing fit and spat it into a napkin. So sophisticated!

    These days I eat handfuls of olives - green, black, stuffed, whatever. Kalamata is my favourite. Yum!

  • I used to dislike anything battered, but now I absolutely love it! Battered fries/chips are honestly such a step up that I'll only eat normal ones if I don't have a choice

  • Asparagus, Broccoli, and broccolini... although to be fair, I didn't discover broccolini until about 20 years ago, when I was in my mid-30's.

    Also, I found out it wasn't the veggie that I disliked, but the way it was prepared. My family boiled (ok Blanched) all vegetables when I was growing up. That's about the worst way possible to cook most veggies, especially the three I mention above.

    Here is what I do to prepare them:

    Asparagus: Heat oven to 350F. Trim woody ends and place them in a single layer in an oven proof dish. Salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle with olive oil. Finally top with Parmesan Reggiano. Roast in the oven for 25 minutes or when cheese is browned.

    Broccoli (florets only) and broccolini (trim woody end, but leave as much of the stem as possible: Heat oven to 350F. Place veggie in a single layer in an oven proof dish. Salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle with olive oil. You can top these two with Parmesan, but I usually do not. Roast until slightly charred about 25 minutes.

    I will never blanch a veggie ever again, except for green beans. There are times when you're serving a spicy dish, or something with a sauce and just need something plain to go along with it. Case in point, for my General Tso's Chicken, I serve it with blanched green beans. Otherwise, I sautee them with salt pepper and red pepper flacks and a bit of high temp oil.

  • I have eaten 9 grapes.

    I used to work as a sullen kid picking grapes for a winery in the summers. Hated the very thought so never ate any, not because I had any respect back then. As a poor kid, you aren't forced to try something if it would waste food: give it to the people whom it can benefit.

    Now then, decades later, and we're touring another vineyard, me and my wife. "Here," says the tour guide, handing me one. "Try it."

    Wife knows the deal - squick - but knows I won't be impolite while this man shows off his livelihood. Her eyes flash a dare but I didn't need that. I ate my first grape about 14 years ago from st hubertus winery in Kelowna. Didn't make a face so as not to offend. It was meh.

    Since then I've had one or two more. And then we go to this fancy pants restaurant and the appetizer on the pricy-ass set menu is this Italian salad thing with all.kinds of green grapes. Fuck me but it was expensive. Ate the whole thing because we don't waste food in my family. She chuckled and rolled her gorgeous green eyes as she stole a few. That's the last 6.

    So 9.

    I may have had 1 hundred strawberries too. I'm livin it up.

  • Child pickiness and Brassicus-Cultivar appreciation aside, I have another:

    There were those weird times when things just wouldn't taste right. ~10 years ago I disliked cherries for tasting somewhat like alcohol, and more recently Orange juice tasted soapy to me for a time. Both of these things have since gone away and I'm back to eating just about anything.

93 comments