For most of my life, I have despised tomatoes. Tomato soup, ketchup, pasta sauce and the like are all fine. Just raw tomatoes, I've always hated.
For the last year or so, I've been trying to work myself out of this. I've been doing this by leaving the tomato on bought sandwiches, munching down on tomato in salads and occasionally, just occasionally, eating chunks of tomato for the hell of it.
It's mostly worked. I wouldn't say I love the things, but I can now easily tolerate them. I'll wait until I get to Italy, land of tomato heaven supposedly, and see if I can find some really really good tomatoes. Then I'll eat some.
This article is by a restaurant critic who, getting the job, needed to lose some irrational food dislikes. Pretty odd ones (except the retsina bit) and he hated one of my favourite foods, kimchi.
Now I've been trying to think what other irrational food dislikes I have. The only one I can think of is avocado. I'm not so pressed to get rid of this one, as it's not such a staple as tomato. If I end up planning a trip to South America, I'll probably have to work on it.
If only I could get Holly to work on some of her food dislikes. She hates tomatoes, most pulses, peppers (but not chillis) and most of all, peas. Even lovely, sweet, fresh peas straight out of the pod. Freak.