Vegetables
Brussels sprouts.
No one in the 80s-90s knew how to cook them and always overcooked them. Now they’re made roasted and absolutely delicious.
No wait! I read something about this! Those were totally different brussel sprouts! I guess they came up with a new species that didn’t such so bad and that’s why brussel sprouts suddenly got tolerable.
Now I have to go see how much of this is true.
Edit: What do you know? All of it! https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/10/30/773457637/from-culinary-dud-to-stud-how-dutch-plant-breeders-built-our-brussels-sprouts-bo
Seconded. Oven roasted or air fried, they’re little balls of joy.
I always got boiled ones in the old days, same with spinach 🤮
Airfrying…thank you, good tip!
I always fry them in butter, small onion, garlic and little bacon, then add a very small amount of stock and steam them lid on till the stock has evaporated.
I use more onion and bacon when I am preparing them for Dutch Stamppot.
Oh! It’s not just that we got better at cooking them! Brussel sprouts were actually bred to taste better around the 1990s/2000s.
https://www.mashed.com/300870/brussels-sprouts-used-to-taste-a-lot-different-heres-why/
Oh super interesting! I love that we’ve bred all kinds of vegetables and fruits to be more palatable over the eons.
Life never gave us lemons, we made them ourselves.
I keep hearing this, have to bite the bullet and try sometime.
Soooo goooood… My go-to now for a really good really “bad” meal are Memphis style ribs with roasted brussel sprouts with butter and garlic.
…why can’t you be on sale now ribs lol
Pizza and burgers
Pickled everything.
Korean food changed my perspective on pickling and fermentation, and my digestive system!
I always liked sauerkraut but I was weirdly against the idea of kimchi as a kid. I think the first time I heard of it, it was described by someone who didn’t like it because it sounded super gross, and I had zero spice tolerance. These days, I put it on practically everything or eat it by itself as a side.
A few years ago, I was working at a restaurant when it went under, so as sous-chef they let me take a few bits home with me. I took 5kg of kimchi home. I used to, like, come home drunk and eat a handful of it out the fridge, haha.
Oh man, that’s the dream. I buy it from a local guy who started making his mom’s recipe for friends during the pandemic and now sells at farmers markets and stuff, and I go through about a gallon every month or two. I need him to start selling me buckets of it.
I LOVE home-made kimchi. Store bought kimchi is just… meh.
Chilies of all kinds. Right now I have a selection of chili purées in my fridge : Madagascar, Sénégal, Réunion island…
Cilantro. I’m still not convinced that I’m not one of the people to whom it tastes like soap, but over the years I started to tolerate, then enjoy it.
You’d definitely know it if you were one the people who have that trait. It’s like liking a bar of ivory soap.
Avocado, young me thought it was a Kiwi so it might just have been the surprise of how different it was.
Green beans. I still don’t like them if they came from a can, though. But fresh ones, French cut and sauteed in garlic butter go great with meat.
Sauerkraut! Used to be toilet cheese, now it’s a delicacy that’s earned its place on my sandwiches.
Steak fries, because everybody is stupid when they’re 7.
“These don’t taste anything like steak!”
School food ruined so many things for me. I used to hate rice and gyros but they are really tasty if prepared well
Spinach. Maybe it’s availability but growing up we only got it canned and my mom cooked the hell out of it. I hated the black slimy bitter salty …. Just not even a food . But now that I’m an adult and fresh spinach is available year round, I love a nice spinach salad and even slightly wilted spinach in a pasta
I have eaten 9 grapes.
I used to work as a sullen kid picking grapes for a winery in the summers. Hated the very thought so never ate any, not because I had any respect back then. As a poor kid, you aren’t forced to try something if it would waste food: give it to the people whom it can benefit.
Now then, decades later, and we’re touring another vineyard, me and my wife. “Here,” says the tour guide, handing me one. “Try it.”
Wife knows the deal - squick - but knows I won’t be impolite while this man shows off his livelihood. Her eyes flash a dare but I didn’t need that. I ate my first grape about 14 years ago from st hubertus winery in Kelowna. Didn’t make a face so as not to offend. It was meh.
Since then I’ve had one or two more. And then we go to this fancy pants restaurant and the appetizer on the pricy-ass set menu is this Italian salad thing with all.kinds of green grapes. Fuck me but it was expensive. Ate the whole thing because we don’t waste food in my family. She chuckled and rolled her gorgeous green eyes as she stole a few. That’s the last 6.
So 9.
I may have had 1 hundred strawberries too. I’m livin it up.
Broccoli is awesome.
Mushrooms - I once puked them up on the table when my mom made me eat them…canned mushrooms FTW! I now, of course, can not get enough of them - sautéed, baked, sliced/raw on a salad…gimme some fungus already!!
I get so jealous when people post pictures of their locally owned supermarket selling chanterelles and morels… I’m just sitting here like a chump eating button mushrooms which are apparently the only mushrooms that exist according to all the store owners in my city. ;-;
