<p>Some things I loved as a kid & still make: meatloaf, chili, baked beans, fresh fish on the grill, hamburgers on the grill, steaks on the grill, white bean-and-ham soup, blueberry pancakes from scratch, homemade meatballs, Christmas cookies & pastries, homemade pies, homemade bread. In almost every case, my version is a marked improvement over Mom’s. Well, except for some of the baked goods, but mine are pretty good, too.</p>
<p>Some things I loved as a kid but never eat now: sloppy Joes, cabbage rolls, liver & onions, sardine sandwiches, pot roast, pork roast, fried chicken, hot dogs, bologna.</p>
<p>Some things I hated as a kid but love now: pretty much anything with sauerkraut, almost anything Chinese, scalloped potatoes, mac & cheese (yes, I was that rare kid who hated mac & cheese).</p>
<p>Some things I never had as a kid but love now: pasta & pesto, pasta e fagiole, Polish sausage, many healthy made-from-scratch soups (Mom made split pea soup from scratch; other than that it came from a can), tuna casserole (my Dad’s one condition on marrying Mom was that she promise never to serve tuna because he hated it, but DW makes a terrific tuna casserole), lobster, sea scallops, lots of fresh shellfish dishes; Indian, Thai, Mexican, Middle Eastern, Ethiopian, and other ethnic cuisines that pretty much didn’t exist in this country, at least not in our part of it. Besides restaurant fare, we’ve adopted recipes of some of our favorite dishes into our cook-at-home repertoire.</p>
<p>On the whole I’d say there’s not more than a 35% overlap between what I ate as a kid and what I eat now.</p>