Mar 24 2007
Black Jelly Beans and Broccoli
I used to hate the black jellybeans.
I’m referring to those old-fashioned jellybeans, your basic every day jellybeans.
You know the kind: green tasted like lime, red tasted like cherry, yellow tasted like lemon, orange tasted like orange, pink tasted like, uh, pink, and black tasted icky.
When I was a kid all the kids hated the black jellybeans. Give us a bag of jellybeans and you’d end up with nothing but black ones.
Those black beans were a mystery. The mystery was why they were in the bag.
I also used to hate the taste of broccoli.
I had problems with even spelling it. I still have to look it up – is that two Cs and two Ls or one C and two Ls. Aarrrggh.
When I was a kid I just didn’t like the stuff. I can’t even recall why.
What I do remember is that I couldn’t leave the table until I had finished my vegetables. If the vegetables were broccoli, I’d be the last one at the table.
Speaking about the table, it was a classic. It had a white formica top with a pink and gray boomerang pattern. Its edge was ringed with ridged aluminum.
Staring at those boomerangs was a good way to avoid the massive bright green treetops that were congealing on my plate and waiting to be gnawed on.
I had two methods to get rid of the broccoli. Both did not involve my actually ingesting it.
One was to toss it out the kitchen window and into the garden.
The other was to fling it behind me in the space between the wall and the open door. Such is the logic of a 4-year old.
I remember my father cleaning out the broccoli behind the door on a regular basis. Guess he knew that was one battle he wasn’t going to win.
At some point in my life I started to like the licorice taste of black jellybeans. Broccoli has been one of my favorite vegetables for years now.
How’d that happen? Guess it’s true what they say about your taste buds changing as you age.
What about you? Do you remember foods you hated as a child and now enjoy?
i still hate black jelly beans and your articles literally brought the taste back into my mouth . . . blah! . . . . anyways, to answer your question . . there’s this chinese vegetable thing called wintermelon and I HATED it as a kid, but now love it in my soup when I get sick or when the weather is nice and cold. . . . .it’s weird how your taste buds develop, huh?
Hey, Gary – I can’t tell from the bio you have on your MrGaryLee site but were you “born here”? If so, it makes the foods-you-used-to-hate-as-a-kid thing even more inneresting.
I was born here. Dunno if you recall my describing myself as a banana. I like Chinese food. I was raised on it along with Campell soup. There’s a post in there somewhere.
Anyway, if you’re born here and half of your family wasn’t, you want to blend in, right? So your parents dish up some freaky looking weird tasting vegetative matter like bitter melon or throw in what looks like tree bark into soups and you just want to back away from the table sloooowly and head for the nearest McDonalds.
Did you go through that? Now I like those freaky looking weird tasting vegetables! Except bok choy. Unless it’s chopped up into bite-sized pieces it’s torture to eat. It’s so stringy. Yack.
I love broccoli!
What I do find, now that I am older, is that I can’t eat sugary foods without getting a headache.
HMTKSteve: I’m almost a decade older than you as far as I can tell.
As my mom has been telling me all these years: It Gets Worse.
Ms. Q: thanks mom.
You are about my wife’s age. Yes, it does get worse…
HMTKSteve: uhhh, that could be interpreted a few different ways.