To broaden the story a bit, there is a subset of fruits and vegetables that I have over the years liked or even loved the taste of, but the regular forms of which I could not stand.
The perfect example is tomatoes.
I love tomato, always have, but only in sauce or liquid format, like ketchup, tomato sauce, tomato juice, etc. Any other way — diced, chopped, or, God forbid, whole — gave me the willies something fierce. All that gelatinous mass on the inside with slime and seeds. Gah! (Shudder.)
I’ve succeeded over time in stifling the automatic gag reflex. ;) But this past year I’ve tried to be more active about it. I made myself eat delicious dishes that include chunks of tomato, and, when the texture-aversion started up, forced myself to concentrate on the taste.
Something clicked in my brain finally. The taste was awesome. And while I am still some distance away from getting as excited as my wife does about a simple tomato slice with salt as a snack, this is major progress.
A seemingly simple epiphany with profound implications.
That click going off in my head is precisely what the Grown Diaries project is all about. What else have I been missing out on?
After tomatoes, I pushed out my boundaries a bit with other taste versus texture items. Whole oranges versus orange juice. Actual apples rather than juice or sauce. Raisins. And every time so far — save one — my experiments revealed a newfound appreciation for each.
That anomaly was due to what turned out to be not-fresh pear, which does bring up a complication — learning what fresh looks like, what ripe looks like, what good feels like. How do you tell if an apple is good? Or a pear? Or any vegetable?
Now, you’ll notice in the list so far, there has been an emphasis on sweet fruits. Not too surprising, of course. I’ve never really been a fan of broccoli juice or rutabaga sauce. (Shudder again.) Those are the ones that will be the real challenges to come — I don’t even like their tastes, much less textures.
Yet.