As a further elaboration: growing up, I absolutely hated pasta salad. I could not and would not eat it. But one day, when I was about 22-23, I was working somewhere that includes meals, since shifts were literally all day for a week (save eight hours for sleeping). The cook made a pasta salad that I could only describe as “orgasmic.” I ate that same pasta salad for every meal for the next two days until they finally tossed the leftovers. Ever since then, I have been “converted” to enjoy pasta salad. That one dish completely changed how my body reacts to a food that I already tried several times.
It was the fourth of fifth date with my girlfriend. She was an avid cook and wanted to cook me dinner… Specifically lasagna.
I arrived at her apartment with her in full swing preparing it… The only problem was all the pasta was green, it was a vegetarian lasagna (she’s not vegetarian). Asparagus and other vegetables rounded it out. It looked really unappetizing.
Here’s the problem. By this time I was REALLY into this girl and here she was spending a lot of effort making me something that I really didn’t think I could eat. I was afraid this was going to end our relationship.
So I spent the whole time watching her make this dish telling myself… “Ok Canopy, you’re a 34 year old man and not a child. You can pretend to enjoy it this once. It won’t kill you.”
Over and over that was going through my mind.
We sit down at the table and she told me to serve myself and I dished out as much as I thought polite…
Then I took a bite.
I ended up eating two servings worth it was so damn good.
OH, and she and I have been married for 20 years now and have two boys. Also, food became one of the cornerstones of our relationship. She took me from being a Midwest redneck meat and potatoes child, to a full blown foodie that actually has a wider palate that her.
She also taught me how to cook and it turned out I am really good at it. I made us salmon cakes with an aioli, with mashed potatoes (that I just threw together without a recipe), and roasted broccoli.
I’m smiling ear to ear over here. Lovely story.
I once had a ham sandwich so good I switched to Linux
Cheddar cheese on apple pie. Sounds like an atrocity to the uninitiated, but an ex girlfriend from the Midwest introduced me to it and the flavor combination is undeniably amazing.
Cheese - particularly sharp cheeses - can work so well with sweet deserts. In my part of the world it’s tradition to serve Christmas cake - thick, dense, sweet and well-fed - with a slither of Stilton or Wensleydale. So many people turn their nose up at it but it’s such an amazing combination.
Menudo. Genuinely, that shit is delicious, I love menudo.
There was a neighborhood cookout, just to get to know each other. One lady and her son brought menudo to the event. Unfortunately, white people have a weird reaction to the execution of the concept ‘Eat the entire animal’.
She was upset because she thought it was her fault no one wanted to try any of her hard work. I decided, “Hey, I wasn’t sold on raw sushi until I quit being a pussy. Why not?”
Literally? Life changing. Holy shit, it opened up a whole door into how awesome and how creative Mexican cuisine is.
Hated bananas as a child, the smell alone would make me gag.
Puberty hit hard though, and periods do weird things to a person. I woke up in the middle of the night one night NEEDING to eat a banana. I ate all the ones we had at home (about 4-5). When my mom woke up I asked to go grocery shopping to buy more.
I’ve had a completely regular relationship with bananas ever since.
Always hated lentils and lentil soup. Boring and gross.
Had a trip to hospital, massive blood loss, almost died. Ended up ticking all the interesting menu items in a complete haze.
I still swear that random lentil dal saved my life! Honestly the best thing I have ever eaten, I had truly felt like I was slipping away, I cried a lot
Dal is amazing! Love it as well
Good asparagus can do that.
Or good cheese.
Or a good asparagus with cheese
I never liked steak. Growing up, my parents tended to overcook everything (not sure if deliberate, my dad always ordered his steak well done at restaurants), which made eating steak or pork chops an annoyingly chewy experience all for the reward of dry, bland meat.
Just a few months ago, I bought a striploin cut and decided to keep it simple and just die a fry/bake and got lucky and cooked it perfectly (I say got lucky because I had screwed up my plan but caught it at the perfect time and the next few attempts weren’t nearly as good because I didn’t screw up the flawed plan and inadvertently stop cooking it when it happened to be perfect). And now I get why some people are obsessed with steaks.
I still prefer burgers and generally meats that aren’t beef if I’m having meat, but every now and then I’ll try a steak. Though I got a mixer and grinder, so there’s a decent chance that the nice cut will get turned into a nice burger or meatballs, now that I have easy access to ground meat that isn’t just from scraps or cheap cuts and don’t have to hand mix it.
BLT. I always hated tomatoes, then I started growing them with my mom. Grew some called ‘Bread and Salt’ tomatoes. Holy fuck, my brain expanded — best sandwich I’ve had in recent memory.
Really really really good Sashimi converted me, and then really not great overpriced shashimi unconverted me.
Actual good beef steak, with fat rendered well, good moisture, good aromatics, good salt, and really good layer char. Basically, reverse sear done really well. That shit is godly.
In that same vein, mushrooms and wine, reduced with garlic and cream as a sauce, on top of said steak. I did not eat mushrooms before that.
Oysters did this for me. Hated them growing up, even into my early adult years I still hated Oysters. The texture and taste just did not agree with me.
Then one Friday I had to go away for work for the weekend, I went to the local pub where I was staying for dinner, and the chef came out with like 6 Oysters for free, I tried one, then demolished the other 5, ended up ordering a dozen and demolished those. Been hooked on Oysters ever since
Any “salad” that wasn’t some type of leafy green and dressing. Pasta, macaroni, tuna, potato, and I think coleslaw caught some strays causes of the cream adjacent association.
I found out it was raw green peppers and celery I don’t like. But taste change. After I got into cooking and learned what mirapoux was, it was over. I still prefer an acid based slaw as opposed to cream, and I still don’t really fuck with raw green peppers (I would never complain about them if I got them, I don’t even think I would ask for them to be removed, I just would probably cook them if I was at home first).
Toum
tried it once. Now i put it on EVERYTHING
I have like bottles of toum store in the fridge, you know those ketchup bottles. So i can squeeze Toum on whatever i like.
The hard part is peeling garlic…
Tastes change over time so I’ve never thought of it as a conversion. I used to think fish was disgusting. Then I aged and started liking it. I used to think asparagus was gross. Then I aged and started liking it. You probably ‘liked’ pasta salad for a while (as in you would have enjoyed eating it) before you had reason enough to try it again.
I was a picky eater as a child. There are tons of foods I didn’t like and would not eat. As an adult I’ve been challenging myself to try these foods again. The most dramatic difference in what I tasted versus what I expected was just fresh cut strawberries. I was at a wedding and they had a fruit display. I tried one, and then I got more. It turns out that a lot of the foods I didn’t like as a kid were either not the right temperature or bad quality.
