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.
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.
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.
I once had a ham sandwich so good I switched to Linux
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.
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
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…
Good asparagus can do that.
Or good cheese.
Or a good asparagus with cheese
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.
Not me, but my wife hated natto until she had natto pasta (sorry Italians).
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.
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
Other way round. I had the “fish” in the student cafeteria, fell totally sick for a few days (in hindsight, I should have gone to the hospital!), and since then, the smell of fish or sea food makes me sick.
one time a popsicle turned me bi
Creamsicle?
I’m choosing to believe you were a straight woman and it was the frigidity that made you attracted to women.
Suck on that!
If you’re joking, that’s a pretty good pun
In 2016 I was traveling around New Zealand and had an amazing mushroom and cheese toastie. It was so good that I remember thinking, as I drove away, that I’d be happy to eat that toastie over a lot of foods I normally enjoy.
Around a year later I decided to stop eating meat. I begun by allowing myself to eat fish and over a month or so gave up that as well. While not directly related, that mushroom toastie planted a seed in my brain that being a vegetarian didn’t mean eating salad every day.
I don’t know if or when I would have become a vegetarian anyway, but that toasted sandwich certainly helped me decide when I was ready.
Mushroom and cheese toastie… I’d never thought about that but might give it a go.
That’s rad, I’ve been on a similar path but I keep on going back to meat from fish
Don’t worry about being an absolutist!
Eating less meat is 100% a win. Celebrate that!
