I've found that the things I didn't like but like now are usually things I can only take in certain ways, or in certain places.
I used to hate tomatoes, but now I'll eat them--provided they're flavorful and don't taste like cardboard. (Problem is, 99.9% of them around here seem to be yucky.) I still won't touch artichokes...unless they're in cheesy artichoke dip. I used to hate rice, too. Now I'll eat white sticky rice, especially if it's attached to sushi. I've gotten to where I'll eat bleu cheese dressing if it's with hot wings (oddly, bleu cheese in crumble form was never a problem--it's the watered-down dressing form I couldn't/sometimes still can't stand) and especially if it's got little crumbles of the real stuff in it. I've found that fajitas aren't too bad, either--I just hated the smell of the onions sizzling around (seriously, I've smelt better armpits and don't get the appeal of stinky fajita platters in Mexican restaurants). And finally, I still hate ranch dressing and still hate bacon, but there's these odd "crazy wing" things that one of the restaurants here does where the combination of ranch and bacon isn't too bad...like two eews that make something very, very yummy.
I was (and still am) a pretty picky kid. But now, I'll try just about anything at least once. I want Zimmern's job.
- probably my favorite all-time sandwich. I have to go to Red's Eats in Wiscasset for the best lobster rolls on the planet every time I'm in Maine.
