Something I've noticed as I've got older is just how much food is now palatable to me. For instance, when I was younger I never used to like onions, and now I quite enjoy a bit of onion in things, or cooked with something (not raw though, bit too overpowering for me). This is true of quite a lot of food now, and I'm beginning to wonder; am I going to have to retry every food I haven't eaten recently to see if I like it now?
Tomatoes and carrots where two other foods I never liked. I mean yes, I like tomato ketchup, but otherwise I was never a fan of either, and while I still can't eat carrots without gravy, I do like both now. The same is true of several other vegetables too, but those are the only ones I can eat without anything else.
See this is something else I've noticed related to this. My eating habits have changed. When I was younger I used to eat everything bit by bit. So if I had some chips, some sausages, and some bacon, I would eat the chips first, and wouldn't touch either of the other two until all the chips were gone. Mixing food that was on the plate was never something I used to do.
Another thing I've come to learn is that I now like baked beans again. See when I was little, I really liked them, but then one time I ate an incredibly bad batch, and it made me ill. That put me off them for ages, and I never used to eat them, until another day in a café where they were on a plate with my fry up, all over the bacon. Now I wasn't going to give up perfectly good bacon, so I ate the beans as well. Was as nice as I remembered.
I've always been a fan of mixing odd things. However, something I learnt from experience was that Marmite and Salad cream taste foul together. I've sworn this for an age. Then my girlfriend asked me to make her a Marmite, Salad cream, and cheese sandwich. My immediate reaction was probably similar to yours is, in that I was disgusted.
However, curious, I decided later that I would try such a disgusting sounding sandwich, and was surprised to learn it was actually quite nice. I'm not sure if it was a case that I'd never got the balance right before, or maybe it just needed the cheese to work, all I know is it was quite nice.
This is the puzzling fact of life. As you get older your taste buds change. Don't believe me, offer a six year old, and a sixty year old some chocolate. The six year old will gorge himself on the stuff, loving it and wanting more, while the sixty year old will probably take a small piece out of kindness, but is more inclined to not choose to eat it, or want for it without the offer.
That is, in part, down to the fact that kids are greedy and don't care about there health, but is mostly because at six a person wants mostly sweet food, but by the time s/he's sixty s/he should find his or her taste buds have grown less fond of sweetness, and instead prefer more savoury food.
But why have my tastes changed in only ten years? Surely it takes longer than that to learn a difference in food? It is possible I've just found better cooking though. I mean there's a difference between restaurant quality food, and the stuff school cooks would prepare en mass for several hundred people.
But then, even a lot of that stuff would be better than my mothers cooking. For years all our food was pre-made, the kind where you just had to heat it according to instructions in order to cook it. My mother never made a thing from scratch for us. Now this is true of most mothers, but my mother couldn't even follow instructions on packets.
Instead, my mother had just one technique. Fill up a chip pan with oil, let it get hot, then throw it in until it looked done. And this was fine for chips, but she did everything like that. I recall on more than one occasions cutting into food that looked good, only for it to actually still be raw on the inside, because deep frying didn't cook all over, but rather than the outside in.
My mother never figured this out though. She'd always say "Well if I'd left it any longer it would've got burnt." Which is true it would've. When I was younger I used to just eat it anyway, I was hungry, and there wasn't much other choice. This gave me a very strong stomach, and despite the poor quality, and sometimes raw meat, I seldom ever got food poisoning.
But then this was all I knew. I couldn't cook for myself, I just had to grin and bear my mothers cooking. Of course as I got older I learnt to feed myself, and I've not really eaten anything that's been deep fat fried for years.
Which brings me back to the original point. Maybe I did like these foods all along thinking about it. Perhaps it was simply the case that when I was younger it was never cooked right. Is it possible this true of everyone? Are all experiences of "I don't like that" simply a case where it's not cooked in a way that is delicious, or served with something that would make it delicious?
Although that still doesn't explain why I don't like sprouts...
Tomatoes and carrots where two other foods I never liked. I mean yes, I like tomato ketchup, but otherwise I was never a fan of either, and while I still can't eat carrots without gravy, I do like both now. The same is true of several other vegetables too, but those are the only ones I can eat without anything else.
See this is something else I've noticed related to this. My eating habits have changed. When I was younger I used to eat everything bit by bit. So if I had some chips, some sausages, and some bacon, I would eat the chips first, and wouldn't touch either of the other two until all the chips were gone. Mixing food that was on the plate was never something I used to do.
Another thing I've come to learn is that I now like baked beans again. See when I was little, I really liked them, but then one time I ate an incredibly bad batch, and it made me ill. That put me off them for ages, and I never used to eat them, until another day in a café where they were on a plate with my fry up, all over the bacon. Now I wasn't going to give up perfectly good bacon, so I ate the beans as well. Was as nice as I remembered.
I've always been a fan of mixing odd things. However, something I learnt from experience was that Marmite and Salad cream taste foul together. I've sworn this for an age. Then my girlfriend asked me to make her a Marmite, Salad cream, and cheese sandwich. My immediate reaction was probably similar to yours is, in that I was disgusted.
However, curious, I decided later that I would try such a disgusting sounding sandwich, and was surprised to learn it was actually quite nice. I'm not sure if it was a case that I'd never got the balance right before, or maybe it just needed the cheese to work, all I know is it was quite nice.
This is the puzzling fact of life. As you get older your taste buds change. Don't believe me, offer a six year old, and a sixty year old some chocolate. The six year old will gorge himself on the stuff, loving it and wanting more, while the sixty year old will probably take a small piece out of kindness, but is more inclined to not choose to eat it, or want for it without the offer.
That is, in part, down to the fact that kids are greedy and don't care about there health, but is mostly because at six a person wants mostly sweet food, but by the time s/he's sixty s/he should find his or her taste buds have grown less fond of sweetness, and instead prefer more savoury food.
But why have my tastes changed in only ten years? Surely it takes longer than that to learn a difference in food? It is possible I've just found better cooking though. I mean there's a difference between restaurant quality food, and the stuff school cooks would prepare en mass for several hundred people.
But then, even a lot of that stuff would be better than my mothers cooking. For years all our food was pre-made, the kind where you just had to heat it according to instructions in order to cook it. My mother never made a thing from scratch for us. Now this is true of most mothers, but my mother couldn't even follow instructions on packets.
Instead, my mother had just one technique. Fill up a chip pan with oil, let it get hot, then throw it in until it looked done. And this was fine for chips, but she did everything like that. I recall on more than one occasions cutting into food that looked good, only for it to actually still be raw on the inside, because deep frying didn't cook all over, but rather than the outside in.
My mother never figured this out though. She'd always say "Well if I'd left it any longer it would've got burnt." Which is true it would've. When I was younger I used to just eat it anyway, I was hungry, and there wasn't much other choice. This gave me a very strong stomach, and despite the poor quality, and sometimes raw meat, I seldom ever got food poisoning.
But then this was all I knew. I couldn't cook for myself, I just had to grin and bear my mothers cooking. Of course as I got older I learnt to feed myself, and I've not really eaten anything that's been deep fat fried for years.
Which brings me back to the original point. Maybe I did like these foods all along thinking about it. Perhaps it was simply the case that when I was younger it was never cooked right. Is it possible this true of everyone? Are all experiences of "I don't like that" simply a case where it's not cooked in a way that is delicious, or served with something that would make it delicious?
Although that still doesn't explain why I don't like sprouts...
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