When I was growing up, we had a rule at the dinner table: You had to at least try everything on your plate. If you didn’t like it, you didn’t have to eat it, but you had to taste it first. This led to the theatrical display of taking a bite while holding your drink to your mouth, so you wouldn’t have to actually taste whatever it was you didn’t want to eat (in my case, English peas; in my sister’s case, green beans). I wasn’t even that picky of an eater, although I can’t say that at the time my mother’s cooking was that adventurous. We ate the standard American fare (with a Southern twist) of the 1970s and 1980s: pot roast, fried chicken, spaghetti, spanish rice, baked chicken, taco night, broccoli with cheese, and double-stuffed potatoes.
In high school I became a vegetarian—the ultimate expression of picky eating—and by the time I grew out of it in my mid-twenties (thank you, France), I was ready to eat just about anything. Lamb brains, sweetbreads, Brussels sprouts, fresh peas, sweet potatoes, venison, braised goat shoulder, kale, kale, and more kale. Anything except a short list of foods that I cannot, will not eat on a train, in the rain, here or there or anywhere. Of course, in the spirit of the old dinner table rule I still (nobly, bravely) take a taste if served one of these offending flavors because it is true that your taste buds are changing all the time and you never know, you might like it.
That philosophy is the reason I often find myself in a nice restaurant, politely spitting out an olive into my napkin. I don’t like olives and I’m not ashamed to admit it. For some reason, my dislike of olives is a regular source of amazement and disbelief among my friends. “How could you not like olives? You, of all people?” they gasp. Or, from those who have known me for a while, “Oh yeah, I forgot you don’t like olives. It’s so weird.”