Changing Tastes

I love scallions, just love 'em. But it was not always so. As a child, I wasn't a picky eater per se, but I surely hated scallions. I became excellent at avoiding them. It wasn't until about a year ago that I ate some and it was like a switch had been turned: what was I doing avoiding these little gems?? Now, scallions are one of few things that I always have in the fridge. Slice them on the bias and sprinkle over any savory dish before serving and they add an elusive lemony greenness. Chop them into three-inch lengths and use as a pizza topping. Toss whole with a little oil and heave them directly on a hot grill and let them caramelize. They're grrreat!

But I can't help but wonder: when did I change my mind about scallions? For that matter, what about all those other foods I didn't like but now do? I used to loathe olives until one night when I was twenty-two and a friend brought over a jar of her own cured olives. I tried one, and from that first bite I have been an ardent olive-lover. What changed?

Some of this, of course, can be attributed to the quality of ingredients. I expect most or all of the olives I encountered as a child were those presliced canned atrocities. So there is a reasonable argument to be made that I essentially never tasted an olive until that fateful night. But scallions? How about mushrooms? Button mushrooms have not changed since I was pushing them around my plate in the eighties.

Sometime in my youth--I'd guess I was nine or ten years old--I was sitting at the dinner table and began to ponder this sort of thing. My sister likes swiss cheese, I thought, but I can't stand it--does it taste the same to the two of us? If we were to somehow eat the same slice of swiss cheese, would it even be the same substance in each of our mouths? I sat at the table, hating swiss cheese, transfixed with this incongruity. You could call it my "Being and Nothingness" moment.

I can't say what bizarre forces are at work in our changing tastes. Life is change, so I suppose it shouldn't come as a surprise that I now love scallions. Maybe the moral here is: keep trying things.

Swiss cheese, however, will always be disgusting.