Coffee - I never drank coffee until I was 32. Now I have a cup a day and of course its black. I've just now started to pick up on the different flavors in black coffee, before, it was just coffee.

Beer - Started drinking beer and wine at 33, both have very distinct tastes, not just across the different varieties but in each individual brew. Really nice having 1 or 2 here and there and actually enjoying they taste, where as before it was just beer, always tasted quite nasty to me.

Vegetables - I can sit and eat a raw onion, tomato, bell pepper, or various other vegetables that for the better part of my life I've always just considered toppings or an ingredient. Picking up on the sweetness mostly now days. A good tomato is better than an apple in my opinion, something I'd never have wanted to eat for 35 years of my life.

I've never been a picky eater, the only thing I WILL NOT eat is celery. I grew up eating every piece of the animals we butchered from snout to tail. Nothing went to waste and you either ate what was on the table or you went hungry. Luckily until my grandfather's second heart attack, most of our vegetables were fried (Okra, eggplant, even broccoli ). But as I get older I really appreciate things more now.

Not sure if I was oblivious before or just unable to taste what I taste now.

Olives - Forgot about olives. Took 34 years to learn these things are not just soured grapes, they taste fantastic!

What's some things yall passed on for years before learning, "Holy Smokes, that's actually good"?

Artichokes

My parents both drank coffee and I hated the taste of it.

During Basic Training at Ft. Lewis Washington, we would get one coffee break in the morning and one in the afternoon, typically out in the woods somewhere and it was freezing cold. I would fill my canteen cup with coffee, wrap my hands around it and then toss it when the break was over. Finally, a friend told me that if I drank it, it would help warm me inside, so I did. And I drink it to this day.

Scotch was an acquired taste for me, one I picked up from a Colonel I worked for in the Army. Still like it a lot.

Artichokes? Those are great. Loved the first one I ate at the age of 19 or so and eat them just about every week to this day, along with avocados.

Can't think of any food I had to learn to like. Like my ex mother in law once told me, if I didn't like it, that meant it hadn't been prepared properly...and she was right.

Scrapple!

I grew up on this PA Dutch specialty but I know lots of people born and raised here that still won’t eat it. My wife is one of them.

It helps not to dwell about the ingredients, LOL

For me the love for coffee came at age 18, in the Army. Prior to that I hated the taste of it, I would only drink it occasionally as a teenager when I needed some caffeine, I would put half coffee and half milk in a glass and chug it down as fast as I could.

Now I can’t go a day without it, 30 years on.

Capers and edible flowers.

ick

For much of my life I scraped off the crust of brie cheese because it tasted too bitter, even acrid. But now I like it. The change happened about the same time that I quit putting cream in my coffee. And I switched from 50% cacao chocolate to 100% cacao.

Apparently I developed a taste for bitterness.

Brussels sprouts. Hated them at family meals, or holiday get together. Now, roasted, they are great.

SPAM. Now I absolutely love the stuff.

I credit the Marine Corps with "acquainting" me with foods I never would have tried before then, and found I liked them, liver and onions, a wide assortment of vegetables, cottage cheese etc.. You eat what the mess hall is serving, or go hungry!

Cilantro

quote:

Originally posted by stkfox:
Cilantro

I've always felt cilantro was the best herb. I love it on damn near everything.

Like some folks genetic disposition to cilantro, I have the same thing to celery, which is why I won't eat it. It doesn't taste too incredibly awful to me, but you can put 1 leaf in a pot of soup and that's the only thing I'll taste in it. Crazy how some food trigger certain folks taste buds and brains different.

quote:

Originally posted by OttoSig:
I've always felt cilantro was the best herb.

Well, close.

Spinach, but around mid-teens I started actually liking it. Mainly the only thing that I still cannot eat and develop any taste for is liver, any kind, no matter how it's cooked or prepared I just can't eat it.

Yes, I grew up in a family that ate liver and onions, but once I found out the function of the liver- no more for me.

quote:

Originally posted by OttoSig:

quote:

Originally posted by stkfox:
Cilantro

I've always felt cilantro was the best herb. I love it on damn near everything.

Like some folks genetic disposition to cilantro, I have the same thing to celery, which is why I won't eat it. It doesn't taste too incredibly awful to me, but you can put 1 leaf in a pot of soup and that's the only thing I'll taste in it. Crazy how some food trigger certain folks taste buds and brains different.

I can eat a ton of Celery in one setting,
the entire bunch, leaves too

cilantro tastes like soap to me,


Pickles are like you mentioned (everything tastes like pickles) to me,
put pickle relish in deviled eggs and it ruins them,
ditto hamburgers etc, pickles get tossed



now as a far as new to me the old guy goes , Almonds, used to hate them, now, I eat them often

cucumbers too,

sliced thin, raw on a sandwich, or with a thin sliced union and a dash or 2 of apple cider vinegar (Cucumber salad is what my granma called it, ) is delicious, hated it when I was a kid,

(but no pickles)

Braunschweiger and liverwurst were on my hate list for a very long time. No more, I love it for sandwiches.

Sauerkraut is another one you couldn't get me to eat. Now I love it to the point that we make our own. I can't get enough of it.

Jim

Stout- It tasted like a combination of cough syrup and dark beer the first time, now I prefer it.

Liver, anchovies, and sardines.

RMD

Avocados believe it our not. And, I live in the so called avocado capital of the world, or at least Southern Kalifornia. Always associated them with guacamole which contains onions/cilantro, etc. all the stuff I don't like. Then about 20 years ago I tried making my own guacamole with just red hot sauce added and the rest is history. Wife and I share an avocado a day now. And it contains the good cholesterol.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
Yes, I grew up in a family that ate liver and onions, but once I found out the function of the liver- no more for me.

Granny, a Southern Belle, made liver and onions. I would scrape the onions off the liver. All these many years later I still wonder why I chewed on that tasteless shoe leather piece of so called meat. But she made damb good biscuits.