Tastebuds Conquered

When I was younger, I used to be the world's pickiest eater. Not only were there a ton of things I hated, but among those things were the typical things that even a picky child loves—pizza, cookies, brownies, etc. It didn't help that the two things I absolutely could not stand, no matter what—onions and tomatoes—were my mom's two favorite foods and included in dinner every single night. Needless to say I got very good at picking around even the smallest pieces of grody things in any meal. I had tried several times to start accepting more tastes, but to no avail. One thing I was open to, however, is trying new things. I would eat just about anything at least once, and love to try crazy things: emu, bison, chicken heart, quail eggs, octopus, eel, sea urchin reproductive organs, a live roly-poly, you name it.

But in the last few years, I've been becoming more and more infatuated with cooking, and have started to dream of attending cooking school and becoming a chef. Now as a chef, I decided, I probably should be willing to eat just about anything, or at least your run-of-the-mill onions and tomatoes. So I got right to work on learning to love (or at least stand) things that I had previously hated. My brother taught me to adore raw fish and rare meat by taking me out to a nice restaurant only if I would try it. The nice people at Benihana taught me to like shrimp, I mean how can you not like something when those amazingly talented chefs are throwing it into your open mouth? I began to like onions when my roommate, just days after we met, made me dinner and I just couldn't be rude and pick them out. I started eating olives because I was too lazy to say anything more detailed than "everything but tomatoes" when ordering at Subway.

Still those evasive tomatoes just could never become the slightest bit less repulsive to me. I figure it's because my mom always grew tomatoes in her garden, which means before I ever encountered a tomato, I encountered a tomato plant. And with tomato plants come tomato worms. Big, juicy, green caterpillars that smell exactly like tomatoes taste. Anytime I ate a tomato, this lovely creature would pop up in my subconscious and I just couldn't eat it. That is until today. I've been working up to this for months, years even, slowly learning to eat tomato sauce and increasingly larger chunks or slices, disguised in the middle of a delicious salad or In-N-Out burger. But today I finally did it. I ate a whole grape tomato and not only did I not hate it, I actually loved it! Boo-yah tastebuds, who's laughing now?