Pistachios

When I was a kid I didn't like pistachios at all (and pistachio ice cream even less). For Christmas, I bought Siobhan some big bags of Wonderful Pistachios, but after she opened it, she said she liked pistachios but that they're not her favorite by any means, and she hadn't had any since she was a kid. I pointed out to her what I had read on the Woot discussion about those pistachios: that back when we were kids, pistachios you got in the supermarket weren't very good because they were typically very very stale, and also, were messed up with being dyed that bizarrely overstated green which many people say changed the flavor. (All that on top of the ever-present "our tastes change as we age" factor.) Plus these were supposed to be high-quality pistachios.

So I encouraged her to try them, and she did, and reported that they were really very good. Somewhere along the way I realized that everything I had said applied to me too, so I dutifully gave them a try, expecting the change to be from "ewww" (as a kid) to "well, they're all right, but I wouldn't go out of my way" (now). To my surprise, they were super-yummy. So much that I have to keep myself from gobbling them all down. We even bought more at the supermarket so I wouldn't feel so bad about eating some of her Christmas present (even though she offered).

If those come up on Woot again, I'm going to buy three pair of bags! Until then, whenever they're on sale at the supermarket we'll stock up. Heck, I like them so much, I might even pay full price for them.

So many other "our tastes change as we age" experiments have been fruitless; anything I didn't like as a kid, I pretty much still don't like. But at least now I have one absolutely unequivocal complete about-face. I wonder how much of it is my tastes changing and how much is pistachios being so much better now.