#oneaday Day 1124: Irrational Food Indifference

Do you ever find yourself thinking, with no real evidence supporting it, that you don't really like something food-wise — and then find yourself surprised when you eat the thing in question and you actually don't hate it, even finding it moderately to extremely acceptable? I do, frequently.

I mean, yes, there are some foods that I absolutely definitely do despise — onions have always made me retch, for example, and now I'm 40 years old I think my parents have just about accepted that as something which isn't just me being a fussy child — but I have plenty of examples that fit into the category I describe above.

For me, the one that I always keep coming back to is sweet potatoes. I can't remember any time when I would have voluntarily chosen sweet potatoes over actual potatoes, and yet any time I end up with sweet potatoes for one reason or another, it tends to be a relatively pleasant surprise. Andie made home-made air fryer chips with sweet potatoes the other night, for example, and they were really nice — but I would never have said to her before dinner "no, actually, use the sweet potatoes instead of the regular ones".

I don't know what it is. It's some sort of weird mental block. To my recollection, I don't have any past trauma involving sweet potatoes — though if I do, I guess it's been repressed to such a degree that I'm incapable of thinking about it — and thus I have no real reason to feel like I don't really like sweet potatoes. And yet I still do feel that any time the opportunity to eat sweet potatoes comes up.

With one exception: last year, when Andie's friends came over for Thanksgiving and we had an American-style Thanksgiving feast. Then we had one of those absurdly sweet sweet potato, marshmallow and sugar monstrosities on the side of all the rest of our food. That was frickin' delicious. And you'd think that would have cured my mental block once and for all.

But nope. So if we're ever in a position where you're making me a meal and sweet potatoes are on the menu, please ignore any indifferent or unsure initial reaction I might make to the situation; I'll probably enjoy it.