Learning to like salad - have you retrained your tastebuds?

[isaidno]

Today I enjoyed a salad!!!

I have been working on learning to like stuff, and now can eat cucumber, grated beetroot, and a little bit of radish.

But I don't think I will ever be able to eat a tomato!!

So, have you learnt to like something?
Or is there something you just can't learn to eat?

Are you Lola?

I've trained myself to like lamb. I used to not like eggplant and courgette, I like both now.

I'm still working on:

• pickle with cheese
• melons other than watermelon

I always liked salad, as long as it doesn't involve iceberg lettuce.

I will never ever eat a tomato!

This is a serious question!

I can´t eat mayonnaise or fresh cream and doubt I´ll ever be able to, I have tried so many times. Tomatoes I never used to eat at all, couldn´t even eat a bit of bread that had touched tomato. Then I could eat them cooked but just pureed, then cooked and lumpy and now I can eat a salad that has tomato in it, for example, so that essentially I eat the seeds and juice that is on the rest of the vegetables but I still can´t quite eat the flesh of raw tomato itself.

Since moving to Spain 4 years ago I have made myself try everything that is put in front of me, sometimes several times, and can now eat a lot more than I used to. I used to hate aubergine and wouldn´t touch it. It´s still not my favourite food by a long shot but I can eat it.

Salads are fab, you´ve just got to learn to whack a whole load of tasting stuff into them.. they are so boring if they´re just lettuce and tomato but experiment a bit more.

ahem. that would be ´tasty´ not ´tasting´...

I have leanred to love wine over the years
But seriously there are few things i won't eat now. Used to not like spicy food but dh loves curry so I guess I retrained my taste buds for that

I think I just naturally like stuff, but I have trained myself NOT to like crisps.

I am very proud of this.... I have eaten far too many of the blighters in my life but since avoiding processed food since I started to have a mad pregnant aversion against it, my tastebuds have become very sensitive to salt and I now find crips (esp Kettle Chips) far too salty.

I used to refuse any meat but chicken, as a hangover from my fussy teenage years. I was a 'vegetarian' but ate cajun chicken and chicken burgers. I feel so sorry for my poor mum now. I then lived with an amazing cook after I graduated who forced me to try all kinds of meats and now I am a meat fiend.

I think salads should definitly not be based on iceburg lettuce. It's the blandest food imaginable. Why do most pub meals come with a limp side of lettuce and a chunk of tomato and cucumber!?

isaidno - Do you like tomato flavoured things? Or is it tomatoes full stop that you can't stand?
I have a friend who cannot stand fresh strawberries, but loves strawberry flavoured things. Very odd.

I don't think I shall ever like capers, mustard or horseradish (bleeuughh)

Weirdly, though, I now like honey after years of thinking of it as bee puke.

I am finding that I am going off some processed foods as I get older (or is that grow up?) - I used to like Pringles, Pot Noodles, Pop Tarts, fruity sweets - now they just make me want to heave if I eat them, don't think I've really enjoyed them for a couple of years. I have managed to retrain my tastebuds away from junk food of the teenage years, perhaps salads will be the next thing and I'll learn to love them? I like salad if it is all prepared for me, but somehow it's never quite the same at home, even after buying the fancy lettuce etc. Only really palatable with a huge blob of potato salad or something mayonnaise-covered.

Salads need lots of interesting things in them, all thrown together and this: No fail fab viniagrette:

2 teaspoons french mustard
1 clove of garlic, peeled
5 tablespoons virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
salt and pepper.

Put into a clean jar (jam jar is good), put the lid on and shake to blend.

will keep in fridge for ages.

Also good:

Honey and mustard dressing

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon of grain mustard
1 teaspoon of clear honey
1 teaspoon of french mustard
4 tablespoons oil (rapeseed or olive)
salt and pepper.

Same treatment - shake in a jar.

I love adding chopped walnuts or pistachios or pine nuts to salads.

I used to love Mars Bars but now if I eat a whole one I feel sick and my mouth feels awful.

There is nothing I don't like really.
That is really interesting KathyMCM. How did you train yourself ? I love crisps. And during my pregnancy it was even worse. My cravings were severe. I just love them, more than anything else. Very odd. Any tips ?

Used to not like olives, coffee and spicy food. I just weaned myself onto them slowly and am now happily addicted.

The only thing I really can't eat is peanut butter - just the smell of it makes me gag.

I have tried many times with olives but have now given up

I ate one when 3 years old thinking it was a grape

similarly cannot eat rice pudding or really anything with warm milk in - porridge, hot chocolate etc

I was forced to eat rice pudding when at school

I have trained myself to at least attempt everything else and even tolerate it, except goats cheese

for this reason I would never force a child to eat a food they disliked - you really will put them off it for life

Oblomov - I did loads of cooking, which meant I didn;t eat processed food (which has high salt levels) so when I ate things with salt in like crisps the salt tasted really, really strong. So to start with I found I could only eat half a pack of Kettle Chips, then just a handful, and now even one crisp tastes just far too salty!

It's amazing because I've been a serious crisp addict since childhood - I can't believe I don't want them any more....

Practically lived on them in my first pregnancy, too - for some reason which I cannot explain with the second it was the total opposite.

Very interesting Kathy. Thank you. I will give it some thought.

Inrockuptible - I can eat tomatoes in something like spag bol, but I make it with passatta because I can't touch lumps of tomato... so maybe there is hope for me on the tomato front...

Thanks for the salad dressing recipe gingerbear - the honey and mustard sounds yum!

Oblomov - just remembered, the other element of my cold turkey was reading Joanna Blythman's 'Bad Food Britain' which includes shocking statistics on how many crisps the British eat instead of proper food. Somehow after reading that I came away thinking that crisps simply weren't cool....