A Date with Dates

Ever since I was young I was exposed to a wide range of foods. I always loved pulling off the leaves of my artichoke, dipping them in a lemony butter sauce, and scraping the meaty part off with my teeth. I wasn’t sure what to make of the earthy goodness of fresh deep red beets. I think I thought they tasted like dirt, which was kind of cool to me if I didn’t think about it too much. Like the artichokes I liked the mechanical task of shelling pistachios to get to the salty sweet gem of a nut hidden inside. I could go through handfuls at a time. Dates, though, were something I could never get into. I think it had something to do with the fact that my mother would try to pass them off as dessert. Dates are a lot of things. According to organicfacts.net they are naturally fibrous, rich in vitamins and minerals, “help in fighting constipation, intestinal disorders, weight gain, heart problems, sexual weakness, diarrhea, and abdominal cancer.” But they are not dessert.

It’s interesting how your tastes can change over the years. Even though I enjoyed a wide range of flavors as a child, there were a lot of things I didn’t like. It may have had more to do with texture, though. Today, I like many of the things I couldn’t stomach as a kid: mushrooms, hollandaise sauce (and eggs over easy, probably my favorite food), oysters, clams, and dates.

Dates have a sweet mealy goodness to them. The mealy part is what I couldn’t get past as a child. That and I expected a refined processed corn sugary sweetness that dominated all the other foods I counted as desserts. Maybe it’s because I steer clear of corn syrup these days and am looking to eat foods that are more food than chemicals or maybe it’s because I have sharper teeth and stronger enzymes to better handle more fibrous foods, but now I actually enjoy eating dates, especially when they are rolled in coconut and have an almond embedded in them. As much as my taste buds have grown and even though I like to snack on dates now, I will never consider them a dessert.

Geoff