Cream.

As a kid, we owned a village shop in the early 1980s that used to sell clotted cream in big open trays. We’d eat what didn’t get sold - until one day I was given some that was very off. I was violently sick and stayed well clear of it for forty years. Tried it again recently in my mid fifties and it’s quite nice.

Also fish - hated the taste when I was younger, but tried it at middle age and quite like it now. Just a change of taste.

Mushrooms, raw tomatoes, onions, peppers, spicy stuff, bleu cheese, wine that isn’t syrup sweet, probably more stuff I can’t think of at the moment.

What made me change? Me. I forced myself to try these things occasionally, over time. Over years.

My feeling is that while it’s ok to not like things, it’s dumb to not expand your horizons, or at least try to.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when I’m showing somebody something new, and they THINK they’ll hate it, so they scrunch their face before they even try it. They’ve already decided they hate it, whether they realize it or not. Either they struggle to open their mind, or they subconsciously try to defend their initial statements that they don’t think it’s good, to save face? IDK. Drives me batty.

Again, it’s fine to not like it. Whatever, I hate lots of stuff. But every so often, I try it again. And I mean REALLY try it. I force myself to imagine what it would taste like if I liked it. I look for the good qualities in whatever it is. If I still don’t like it? Ok, maybe another time.

I admit to still not liking raw onion on my burger. And I only tolerate it on my pizza. But many other dishes wouldn’t taste good WITHOUT onion, in my current opinion. So it’s still progress.

Broccoli

It’s super good if you just cook it right

Stupid movies, think Will Farrell and movies like Anchorman and Step Brothers.

I thought I was top shit in high school and college, that I was so much smarter than the average person and that my tastes were above the general public. Turns out I was just a douche.

Now I know that humans are not binary, that you can like two things for two different reasons. I can enjoy something serious like The Brutalist or The Whale, and then I can also enjoy something silly like Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (Seriously, you should go watch that, Rachel McAdams is amazing in it). It really simply depends on my mood and my emotions in the moment and what I want to watch.

I’ve also learned that the rating system is broken, because it pits movies that are polar opposites like that in direct competition, and there is no way to compare them. Apples and Oranges. But that’s a separate topic.

Mushrooms and roasting the shit out of them. It was always the texture that turned me off. But if you cook them until they are truly caramelized, like way more than you think, they are fantastic! The spongy texture disappears, and you are left with a delicious mouth feel and such a deep flavor. I cooked them so much like that that I am now mostly over the texture thing and they have become one of my fav veg. Not to mention there are so many available varieties out there these days, you’re bound to find one you enjoy.

Hummus. I don’t like mush. But then I ate some and it is fucking delicious mush.

Political violence

Used to believe that it gets you nowhere but then i saw a genocide of children live on my screen, state sponsored terrorism and a careless yet hypocritical world.

So it makes more sense that my answer is Hamas, Zapatista, PFLP, Hezb.

JD Vance’s face. I now think he actually has a cute Backpfeifengesicht.