one time a popsicle turned me bi

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.

The first time I had a Hefeweisen was the first time I genuinely enjoyed drinking a beer. Since then I've been much more receptive to other types of beer but wheat beers will always be my preference.

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 recently came around on non-seafood sushi (sweet potato tempura rolls). I eat seafood once a year in good faith — all types, over the years — and it’s always a hard no, and I had just lumped sushi into that category. But I honestly didn’t know there were veggie sushi options until this past year, so I gave it a try and loved it.

Kenya AA…

I always drank coffee just for the caffeine, but I wanted to cut down on the cream and sugar. So when I’d order the brew of the day, whatever it was, I started taking a sip before drowning it in other flavors.

Buuuut, then I’d go ahead and dump some stuff in it, because I still didn’t like the taste. Until one day, I got a cup and took a sip… and another sip… and decided that THIS cup didn’t need a bunch of stuff in it.

Now I pretty much never add stuff to my coffee( I’ve learned what origins and roasts I like, so I can stay away from coffee I don’t like - and if it’s nasty, it still gets the cream and sugar treatment…

Because life’s too short to drink nasty coffee.

So many times. Hated asparagus until my aunt made it for me at 16/17 years old. Now I can't get enough.

A Peruvian/Japanese fusion restaurant in DC ended my absolute disdain for mushrooms (specifically shitake) when I was in my mid 30s

I have learned to keep trying things I think I don't like every few years because you never know what meal will change your palette - and maybe your life

I had a similar experience with steak.

For the longest time growing up, I just wouldn't eat steak, id eat meat, bacon was fine, chicken was fine, but steak made me wanna throw up. My parents would keep throwing all these sauces on it, and none of them worked. Eventually, at my dads best friends 50th birthday, and he had a really nice roast, I tried it (with no sauce), and suddenly I got it. Ate steak all the time after that.

Ajitsuke tamago ("ramen eggs"). I hate eggs. Always have. But it turns out that I love eggs when they are soft boiled or poached and overwhelmed by savory marinade/sauce. Still don't really like the whites.

If they live long enough, every person eventually develops a taste for pickles.

When I cook meat, eggs or with ginger for people who don't like them, they're usually converted. Turns out most people who don't like steaks, ribs, roasts, etc just haven't had good ones

Avocado. For some reason, for years, I thought they'd taste nasty. Turns out, they're just like meat if it was a fruit and I dig that.

My mum made the grossest fish. Idk what she did to it or what type of fish it was but it stank up the whole house, tasted worse, and was dry as fuck. I avoided all fish for years, still don't really like fish and chips as an Aussie.

Went fine dining once and one of the courses was a piece of fish with toasted quinoa and Geraldton wax. It was one of my favourite dishes of the fourteen courses. Absolutely delicious. Then I went to Scotland and tried Cullen skink and ended up having that multiple times throughout my trip.

I've realised I just hate bad fish, and that mum wasn't as good a cook everyone said she was -and everyone saying that is even worse.

If you haven't grown up drinking it, coconut water tastes a bit funky the first time you try it. The first time I tried it, it was kind of funky and I didn't care much for it. The second time I tried coconut water was after hiking several miles in high heat, sunshine, and high humidity, it still tasted a bit funky. It tasted exactly the same actually, but this time, being quite dehydrated and nearing heat exhaustion, it tasted fucking amazing. Now I love that sweet coconut water umami, so much better than Gatorade or any other sports drink.

I don’t know if this fits but orange juice. I always disliked it even though I thought it smelled great and everyone else loves it, plus I like oranges. Every year or two I would try orange juice again hoping to like it, I really wanted to like it!! After three decades of trying to like orange juice I tried some from a brand I don’t usually buy for my family and it happened! It was so good! I drank like three glasses and got a bad acid stomach ache lol but I’ve liked it ever since, it still hurts my stomach if I drink too much though

Red tuna (akami) in Japan! I previously never cared much for tuna, unless if splurging on toro, then obviously toro is delicious. Now I realize the majority of the tuna we get is mediocre. Need to go the expensive restaurants to get the good stuff.

I thought pizza was just an ok food until having it in Naples. Just a simple margherita lets the quality of the fresh ingredients shine best!

Going to sound weird but mayo.

I grew up with mustard on my sandwich. I hated foods with mayo in it.

Then, I had that Asian mayo, the Kewpie brand.

I once had a ham sandwich so good I switched to Linux

I refused to eat lettuce until I was 16, cause it's leaves and I knew how leaves taste.
At some point my mom made me try it and I realized it tastes absolutely awesome due to my mom's salad dressing.

I'm not sure I have ever had a time a food at all.

For me it was fish. When I grew up we didn't eat out often and when we did I never had fish. The fish my mom cooked at home was few and far between and it wasn't very good in my opinion.

Up through college I would have said I didn't like fish, but when I started working I went out some work dinners where the company was paying for it at upscale restaurants. The first few times I ordered steak, but I got old so I decided to try the fish dish. I still remember it, 30 years later, that I had a fish with nuts on top that was just awesome. After that when I went into fancier restaurants I tried to find a fish as good as that. And the fish weren't good, but some of the fish were awesome, and I really found I liked fish if it was prepared right.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yes, but i mostly chalk it up to me becoming less of a picky eater over time. In this sense it has happened with:

• Coleslaw
• potato salad
• various types of soup
• avocado based foods.

Sometimes you try a new food and its so good that it's all you want to eat (seems to happen most times i visit a new food truck.)

I had a blip where i loved eating olives on pizza and then i started to hate olives again.

Good asparagus can do that.

Or good cheese.

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

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).

I used to only eat mild moldy cheese if at all then at 16 my girlfriend of the time got ugly ass blue cheese and said "just put jam on it" I tried it and it's was so good. I've liked moldy cheese ever since, extra moldy/strong cheese are all good. There's always a ratio of jam to cheese that tastes good, that ratio also keeps going down towards zero.

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.

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

Recently, oysters and Indian food!

Always thought oysters were saltboogers, then a seafood bar opened down the street and the owners insisted I try a few on the house when I was drinking one evening. It was perfection of salt and sea. Now one of my favorite drunk foods!

Also, I've been hesitant of Indian food since I sampled the "cooking" of an Indian roommate a buddy used to have. Last year, a buddy brought me to an Indian place for my birthday after a night out, and we split a tikka masala. I've been back a dozen times since, and might have some Indian food for lunch soon.

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.

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....

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.

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.

Not me, but my wife hated natto until she had natto pasta (sorry Italians).