My mother at one point told us we could each pick a vegetable that we never had to eat. I initially picked peas (sorry, peas, I love you now) and then revised it to lima beans. My other didn't stop making these vegetables, or even serving them, but the idea was anything that was not our most hated veggie, we had to make a good faith attempt to eat.
I remember being at my grandparents house and some something or other had me feeling cranky and treated unjustly in the way six year olds often feel. My grandmother told me she was going to make a delicious vegetable that my mother didn't like.
I knew enough to know that learning important data like my mother had a most hated vegetable was very important.
Looking back now, I can see that my grandmother was having fun, that teasing your children by offering their grandchildren tidbits must have been a joy. And that it was a win-win for me. I would either like the vegetable (it was cauliflower, and I did like it) and make my grandmother pleased, or dislike it, and have this dislike to share with my mother.
I roasted up some cauliflower this weekend and thought about how I think of this story almost every time I make cauliflower.
Food and memories get tangled together so often in such fascinating ways.