Bananas of the World…UNITE!

25. Retry 5 foods I don’t like to see if my opinion has changed

Photo courtesy of Steve Hopson

Growing up, I was a picky eater.  Not as picky as my uncle would lead you to believe, but I liked what I liked and I never had any issues when my parents would take me out to dinner.  Thank goodness my parents were patient with me and didn’t really force me to eat anything I didn’t want, unless you count broccoli, and I’m secure admitting that Herschel and Irving (my Labradors) loved the steamed broccoli that I used to pass them.  I expanded my tastes once I graduated college, and started eating vegetables only after I started seriously dating, since I didn’t want to be that guy toying with my dinner while on a date.

I’ve become somewhat talented in the kitchen in the past few years, and that has led me to expand my palate to include even more to foods I’ve previously disliked, but there are some things that are still on my list.  Some are due to flavor, some are due to appearance, some are due to texture, which was my main reason for avoiding bananas.

Here’s one of my favorite swimming cheers, which was taught to me by my sister (if I remember correctly).

This is the t-shirt from the MAC Swimming Championships in 2001, where we performed that same cheer, along with the always-popular, awe-inspiring and head-turning ‘Bad Banana” cheer.  Good times!

In college, my swim coach Maggie used to extol the virtues of the banana, but I never wanted to give it a retry.  Years later, I decided that I needed to retry bananas because they are one of the best sources of potassium, and since I’ve been upping my running mileage, I want to keep my electrolyte levels high.  I picked up a bunch of bananas from Wegmans, and enjoyed one as a post-run snack while I was stretching.  The verdict?  I enjoyed the banana!  I didn’t find the texture too offensive, and the flavor was delicious.  I’m definitely a convert, and plan on adding bananas to my daily eating plan.  Definitely enthused to get this 101/1001 underway.

Gwen Stefani, singing about bananas at 2:30. Hot. Enjoy.