Try Something New: My Adventure with Olives

I love food! I love cooking with it, tasting it, looking at it, reading about it. I love food! I HATE when people are close minded about food. Perhaps "hate" is a strong word, but it is a pet peeve of mine when someone says "I don't like that" only to discover they haven't had "that" since their crazy Aunt Martha made it at Thanksgiving when they were 12. So you can imagine how big of a hypocrite I feel like every time I walk by the olive bar in any well stocked grocery store.

My relationship with olives goes back to childhood. My mother battled weight problems and up until about 6 years ago was loosing that battle. I am very proud of the way that she has since taken on that challenge and won! That does does not diminish the image of her as a child in my mind. The image in my mind is of an overweight woman in a house coat, at the dinner table eating olives out of the jar. Now, many people have no problem eating olives out of jar, and I don't find any fault with it in itself, but for years that image poisoned my view of olives. The smell, the texture, the pickly-ness of them. It all turned me away.

A couple of years ago, the overwhelming sensation to practice what I preach washed over me and instead of feeling weary as I walked by the olive bar I felt determined. I was going to eat these olives until they didn't disgust me. I started by picking up the sampling cup and placing in it one olive (I can't remember the kind cleary at this time) and a piece of roasted garlic. I tentatively put the olive in my mouth and the most amazing thing happened.... I gagged. Yes, folks, they still grossed me out. I quickly ate the garlic to wash the briny olive down and walked quickly past my recent conquest. Of course it was a conquest. While I still gagged, I did it. After 30 years of avoiding them I faced them head on.

Did I stop there, NO! The next time I was in that grocery store I did the same thing but this time... no gag. The next time... no gag. Progressivly, I came to not hate the olive, then respect the olive, and eventually love and crave the olive. Theory has it that you have to taste something several times before you know if you really like it. That theory held true for me and my olives. maybe there is a food in your life that you have bad memories of. Get out there and make new memories with that disdained food. At the very least when some smarmy foodie, like me says "how do you know you don't like it, when is the last time you tried it?" You can say, "just last week, still don't like it." But maybe you will find something more, maybe you will fall in love, like I did. I still can't stand the thought of eating one out of the jar though.