Olives.

Olives have been a thorn in my side for years.  I have a firm policy of at least trying anything that is considered food by any group of people. Note the specificity here.  Just because some crazy thinks you can eat it, does not qualify something as a food I need to try.  It has to be accepted as food within a cuisine.

If at all possible, I like to go beyond try to "like" status with food.  I'm not really sure why.  I think I just like to be happy with whatever people offer and liking everything makes that a lot easier.

I’ve been trying to like olives since I visited Greece in 2001, so for almost a decade. 

To make matters worse, olives are generally accepted as a thing adults eat.  They show up at cocktail parties and on tapas platters and people ask if I want one since I'm an adult.  "No, thank you.  I'm a child person who looks like an adult, but doesn't like olives."  Eek.

Oh, and people claim they go great with gin.  I love gin.  I should like olives if for no other reason than so that I can like dirty martinis, but I don't. 

I’d had the same problem with milk.  Yes, milk.  I had it on cereal and in milkshakes and pudding and stuff, but I couldn’t go for it straight.  Part of the problem could be that my mother refuses to purchase anything but skim milk so for the entirety of my childhood I was exposed to nothing else.  Odd for a woman who grew up on a dairy, but I think that goes back to the "fat is bad for you" thinking she has.  My dad says it's water with chalk in it.  It took at least two weeks of gagging down a glass every single day, but eventually I started to like it.  I like it even more now that my husband has convinced me to go with 1%.  It works so much better in cooking that I wouldn't go back to skim for the world.  Potential upcoming commentary?  I think so.

The same system worked for coffee and beer, two of my current favorite beverages.  I actually learned to like coffee by starting with a high milk to coffee ratio and scaling the milk back until I liked coffee black.  Beer was more complicated.  You can find that story on Brewmiscuous.  

Given my previous successes it seemed reasonable enough to try desensitization again.  I thought if I tried buying a jar stuffed with feta, which I adore, and ate one every day it wouldn't take too long and I would be a mature, adult, olive consuming individual.  It had worked before. 

Not so much with olives.  After three days I couldn't take it anymore.  They sat in my refrigerator for a year until I moved and gave them away to a neighbor.

My husband and I got a Meat Me pizza from Old Chicago last weekend.  We won two free ones along with a ton of gift certificates when we tied for first place in their World Cup Bracket Challenge.  It had a pimento stuffed green olive in the center of each slice's crust.

I ate four rapid fire.

No luck.