As a child, I was probably best known for my tendency to eat anything at any time. One night, my family hit Red Lobster for our annual "eat out" event. I was eleven at the time, so I qualified for the $2.99 child's price for all-you-can-eat popcorn shrimp. I must have eaten six or seven extra servings, so many that the waitress took to carrying an extra bowl of the fried pipsqueaks every time she walked past the table. There is also a certain dish known as peanut butter salad--the sole ingredients are peanut butter, Miracle Whip and torn up pieces of bread--that I managed to popularize among my first-grade classmates (much to the horror of their parents).

Despite my early appetite for strange and unusual foods (and even odder combinations thereof), there were two things that I would never eat: fresh tomatoes and blue cheese.

My brother Matt loved blue cheese. We kept a bottle of generic blue cheese dressing in the fridge just for him. I would never touch the stuff, and if I was feeling ornery I would clandestinely throw away a perfectly good (and mostly full) bottle of blue cheese dressing.

Over the years, my feelings toward fresh tomatoes have mellowed. I have come to appreciate (though not necessarily love) ripe, homegrown tomatoes in salads or on burgers or in sandwiches or whathaveyou. I also have learned to use fresh plum or roma tomatoes if I'm feeling frisky and want to make my own red sauce. My wife Barbara, however, still adheres to a more fundamentalist line when it comes to the squishy red fruit: If she sees it in the house, it finds an exit by the quickest method available--be it door or window. If I'm going to use a fresh tomato or two, I have to hide them.

Actually, that's kinda fun.

In any case, I held firm on blue cheese for more than 32 years. And then late last summer we held a baby shower for a couple of friends. Someone brought over a hunk of blue cheese for serving to guests. I'm a nice guy, so I cut it up into vague approximations of cubes (with aesthetically-pleasing crumbled edges, of course) and put it out. No one ate any.

But after the party, as I was putting away the food and generally cleaning up, it occurred to me that maybe I was missing out on something by eschewing the blue. I've read dozens of books on food (as opposed to cookbooks, of which I've perused significantly fewer), and the rhapsodic descriptions of blue cheese as "pungent," "spicy" and "piquant" all activated my saliva glands despite my aversion. So I put down the plate (no use making a mess dropping the entire load on the floor if it turned out I really did hate the stuff after all) and popped a piece in my mouth.

Hot damn! The stuff was pungent and spicy and crunchy and rather exploded with all sorts of cool flavors all at once. Mold is a truly bitchin' thing!

S o ever since, I've picked up a small hunk of les bleu at the grocery store every two or three weeks. And after a particularly stressful day, I'll settle down on the couch with a glass of single malt scotch or good bourbon on ice, a small quantity of cheese and a book. Lately, I've been reading a good amount of Noam Chomsky. I like Noam, mostly because he makes me feel like I'm not some wacko freak tilting at windmills.

Beer also goes exceptionally well with blue cheese. Stouts are probably best suited for this duty (particularly those with higher alcohol contents), though I've found that barleywines and highly-hopped pale ales also complement the cheese very well. The simple fact is, blue cheese goes with just about anything. I've even had some with a can of Diet Mountain Dew and enjoyed the experience greatly.

All this, um, rhapsodizing of my own does not mean that I've gone utterly hog raving mad about the stuff. I'd estimate my monthly budget for blue cheese at about six bucks. I buy very fine cheese (stuff that goes for, say, $20 a pound), but I buy very small amounts. I eat but a few crumbles at a sitting. I have no idea if this is normal or acceptable or what, but I don't care. This is how I eat the stuff, and everyone can scarf down an entire longhorn of Colby if that's how they like their cheese.

Ever since that party, I've been careful to put out some blue with the sharp cheddar and aged gouda that we traditionally serve. I've noticed that most often I'm the only person partaking of the blue. Again, that's fine. More blue down my gullet means a merrier me. If no one else has bothered to check into the joys of les bleu, well, too bad for them.

I have this philosophy of challenging my most firmly held beliefs every so often. It's too bad it took me some 32 years to second-guess my aversion to blue cheese, but hey, it just goes to show the virtues of the truly self-examined palate.

Jon Worley still hasn't had the guts to try generic blue cheese dressing. He's pretty sure he still wouldn't like that.