Once my great aunt (who incidentally is otherwise a lovely person) made me eat a piece of raw zucchini when as a child I insisted I didn’t like it. It did nothing to endear said vegetable to me further and though I never went as far as to pick them out of things on the rare occasions on which they were served to me, I didn’t ever really grow to love them.
Strangely though, when I think about it now, I do love them. I have decided therefore, that zucchinis must be in the curious category of creeper. You know, those things or people you either hate or don’t much like and suddenly one day you realise that for no reason at all, you’ve changed your mind; they’re not so bad after all, or even rather nice. Creepers are good for stubborn people like me who make snap judgements, because the process is so gentle you never realise it’s happening until it’s over – painless!
What did you used to hate and now love, or vice-versa?
Zucchini Fritters
I had some zucchinis on the fridge and since we were due to go away, decided we must use them, all, and quick. The result was these fritters, vegetable-y enough to make you feel virtuous but cheesy enough to feel like a treat, make ‘em for lunch with some salad and bread and you’re set. This should feed two.
2 or 3 zucchinis, coarsely grated
1 egg
4 tablespoons of finely grated parmesan
4 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon salt for dewatering (for want of a better word) the zucchinis
1/2 teaspoon salt, a grinding of nutmeg and lots of pepper for seasoning
Put the grated zucchinis in a colander, sprinkle over the first quantity of salt and leave for 5 minutes, squeeze out the water.
Put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix, use a bit more flour if it looks very wet but it shouldn’t be at all dry.
Heat a pan to medium high and add enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan very thinly.
Drop tablespoon sized dollops of the batter 2 cm apart in the pan and fry until golden, turn.
The cheese makes them a bit gooey in the middle so they might be done but still look a little wet, just eat one and see.
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Oh, courgettes, me too, and mushrooms. They were just inexplicably slimy and caused many dinner table dramas and elaborate hiding techniques when I was little. Both of which have certainly crept up on me over the years – I sometimes catch my mum looking at me sideways when I wolf down my courgettes, as if to say “why couldn’t you have done that thirty years ago and saved us all the histrionics”…
Kedgeree, however, still turns my stomach at the merest mention. In that, at least, I seem to have been an intelligent child.
hehehe…I didn’t like dead animals (and couldn’t catch the live ones), but that problem was easy to solve! (the first I mean, stop eating meat…live animals I still cannot catch, unless they are very slow :-))
I used to think blue cheeses were disgusting, but now I like them. I am often victim to the creepers…
Parsnips, peas, peppers and tomatoes – wow, i didn’t like quite a lot when i was a kid. That has all changed and the only thing I don’t eat from choice now is avocado (although i do enjoy guacamole – hmm).
This recipe is great for those who, like me, get veg box deliveries full of courgette/zucchini ever single week at the moment. I have a fridge full of the stuff and this looks like an easy and tasty way to get rid of a whole lot of it.
Believe it or not, I absolutely despised plain rice when I was little, which is weird because in every other way I was the unfussiest kid ever. The only way to get me to eat rice was to smother it in some kind of sauce.
Then I grew up enough to learn about food, and discovered that the real problem is that my parents had been using parboiled rice. Now I know that it’s just parboiled rice that I can’t stand.
PS – I’ve always loved zucchini. Raw, cooked, grilled, shredded, battered and fried, baked into muffins, etc etc etc… which is good, because there’s a heck of a lot of zucchini to be eaten at the moment. :)
Ginger! That’s my creeper!! I used to totally despise them and would eat anything that was cooked with them (and well, you know the chinese put ginger in all their damn stir fries and even steamed stuff)… but then one day like you said.. I hadn’t had them for decades probably and my coffee guy gave me a lemon/ginger tea when i was sick and I was like, oh wow what’d ya put in it it’s GREAT and he said GINGER. CRA-ZEE. Have loved it ever since :)
Nearly ALL the food I eat now could be considered a creeper… I used to have the most ridiculous diet, even all through my teenage years. I ate sandwiches with only mayonnaise and bread. The only meat I ever ate was bologna. The only thing I would accept on my pasta was cheese. Not even sauce.
Now I’ll eat anything under the sun, I feel I have so many years to make up for.
Dark Chocolate! Used to think my mum’s crazy liking the stuff, but now I don’t go below 80% cocoa!
Olives, bananas and eggs were my creepers.
As a child, olives were always the domain of adults. Then one day, my sister said to me, whilst chatting on the phone, ‘guess what I’ve got in to lately? I’m really loving jars of olives’. To which, I was like ‘me too!’ My sister and I decided that olives are something that you grow into.
For some reason, I never liked bananas (though have always loved banana milkshakes) or eggs as a child, either. Then, through my travels and eating in other people’s homes, they would serve foods to me and quite often I would think to myself. ‘Why haven’t I been eating these for years, you’re lovely. Now a poached egg on toast is one of my favourite breakfasts but as a child, it would have had me running for the hills. WEIRD!
Yoghurt and Eggs! My mother had never liked yoghurt or cream, so as a kid I think I decided I didn’t like it either and would turn my nose up at every offer. I discovered yoghurt in high school and immediately fell in love, but I’m still only acquaintances with cream. I’ve never hated eggs, but they’ve always been a “rarely” food. Then I perfected the poached egg and now I can’t seem to get enough of them!
And I’ve always loved Zucchini – next to potato it’s my best vegetable friend :0)
Hi Sasa,
Since I just made your corn fritters for the second time, I think that I would really like these too! As for a creeper – that would be cooked mushroooms for me. I could always eat the raw ones, but gagged on them cooked. Now I quite like them. Funny how that is, now that you mention it…
I’m glad you liked the fritters! These are a bit moister and plainer, let me know how they turn out for you ^_^
I didn’t like olives until I was about 25. And I hated the taste of beer until about the same age (which, I guess, was good). About zucchini; in Sweden we often use zucchinis as a substitute for cottage cheese in a desert called oskaka (cheese cake). It’s a very versatile vegetable…
I love zucchini fritters.. we serve them here in Greece with a yogurt sauce (which has a bit of lemon and herbs in it)…
Oh goody, look forward to eating them SOON!
I’m not alone! There are so many people with creepers! Hallelujah ;P
The list is near endless for me. A few years ago I decided that I was going to eat everything and make myself enjoy it too. I set upon a journey of force feeding myself things, first drunk then progressively sober until I liked them. It works surprisingly well, for example I didn’t use to be able to put a bit of blue cheese in my mouth without retching (maybe a slightly OTT reaction) and now I eat it near daily. I’ve also become a offal addict, eating tripe and stomach most weeks. I feel liberated.
Still can’t abide yoghurt though. Yuk.
LIVER!
I loved it, then I hated it and now I love it again.
I couldn’t live without liver… Mmmm… Liver…
For me it was wasabi, celery, green pepper and gherkins (all green stuff!?). Now I love them. But I still can’t eat natto or drink plain milk…
What’s your beef with green? ;P I still hate wasabi, I’m embarassingly that wabinuki girl at sushi shops.
Mmm, those fritters look delish!
My creepers are asparagus and mangoes. Every once in awhile I’ll re-try things I don’t like, to see if my tastes have changed. I’ve been enjoying asparagus for years now, but mangoes I just started liking last week! They’re abundant here, and some friends brought a bunch over, and I decided to give ‘em another try. YUM!
I still can’t bring myself to like cantaloupes or honeydew melons… I WANT to like them, but every time I try them I’m like, yep, nope, still a no! They’re pretty much the only fruits I don’t like.
Heh, I’m the opposite – love melon but shamefully can’t get into mangoes. I can eat them but I don’t really enjoy myself ;P
Haha I love the term creepers Sasa! And yes unbelievably I used to hate seafood and prawns At a family dinner I pulled off all of the tempura batter from a prawn and ate that and left the prawn behind :P
The fritters look delicious, very colourful! I used to hate brussel sprouts until a chinese/kiwi friend served them fried in fresh ginger and garlic and I love them now.
How straange! I made some fritters today!
I used to hate brussel spouts but now I like them :)
I have a household full of zucchini-haters, and am secretly hoping to win them over (plan a: via zucchini fritters; plan b: via chocolate zucchini cake). I’m counting on creeper-dom….
Let me know how that goes, there’s a few things I want to force-creep on F and I need all the help I can get.
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