Food Preferences

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Jenny: I never used to like cheese. My parents regularly had cheese and biscuits at the end of a meal instead of dessert, and I found it terribly disappointing when they did that. They used to say, you don’t know what you’re missing. Just try a bit. It’s fantastic.

But I really couldn’t stand the texture. In Britain, we have a hard cheese called cheddar, and I found it crumbly and greasy at the same time. They also loved Stilton, which is a really strong cheese with blue moulds through it. I found the smell of it unpleasant, never mind the taste. I thought I would never like cheese, until I went to France and tried brie for the first time on crusty white bread.

Brie is mild and creamy, and is best when it’s ripe and runny. I was so surprised that I liked it, that I slowly became more adventurous and started to try other cheeses. Although it’s not my favourite thing, I’ve got to like a few types of cheese now, even some hard cheeses, as long as they’re mild. It’s just as well because I’m now vegetarian. However, I can safely promise that I will never get to like Stilton.

Ed: I used to have such trouble with vegetables when I was a child. So did my brother. I loathed cauliflower. Yuck.

And my brother absolutely detested Brussels sprouts. Our parents insisted that we put little of each vegetable on our dinner plates. A bit of everything, they would say, so we couldn’t avoid eating them. But cauliflower to me looked like bits of brain and seemed bland and tasteless with an unpleasant watery texture. And my brother thought that sprouts just looked disgusting and tasted really bitter.

He couldn’t even bear the smell of them. But we had to have them on our plates. We used to try and hide them in our paper serviettes or drop some on the floor when our parents weren’t looking. Or sometimes we’d swap vegetables because if I had to, I’d rather eat sprouts than cauliflower. And my brother would rather have cauliflower any day than eat one single sprout.

We’re much better with vegetables now, if they’re not overcooked. But although it’s traditional to have Brussels sprouts for Christmas lunch, neither of us will eat them.

Rosie: As a kid, I had a passion for baked beans. You know, those ones in tomato sauce in a tin. I would rather eat them than almost anything else.

I adored the smooth texture of the beans in the rich, creamy, sweet sauce. You could also get them with sausages in. I loved that variety almost as much with salty, chewy mini sausages, mouthwateringly delicious. My favourite meal was beans on toast, sometimes with grated cheese on top or extra tomato. My mum used to despair of getting me to eat proper food, as she called it.

After a while, in an attempt to get me to experiment more with a wider range of meals, she refused to buy any more beans. So I just bought them with my pocket money. They weren’t expensive and I was happy to eat them cold straight out of the tin. When my mum found out, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She used to say, you’ll make yourself sick of them one of these days.

And actually, she was right. I can’t look at a baked bean now.