re: Foods you like that get a bad rap.

Cooking pears eaten raw. When I was a kid in the Lower 9th Ward one of my neighbors had a huge back yard that had Japanese Plum, Fig, Persimmon and Cooking Pear trees in it.

They'd let me go in their yard to pick some of the fruit since the hardly ate any of it and I loved eating all the different fruit they produced.

Cooking pears are hard a hell so I'd have to cut them in thin slices to eat them. Most folks wouldn't touch them unless they were cooked down with brown sugar to soften them up and add sweetness.