When I was a kid, my mother was obsessed with food safety. Handle raw chicken, and you were in need of full-body disinfecting. Cook burgers, and you’d best crisp them to a germ-free, well-done briquet. And when sushi first hit the San Francisco scene? Forget about it. I mean, raw fish!

From that childhood, I’d been inculcated with a fear of runny egg yolks, presumably a salmonella-laden path to near-instant death. At the same time, I also hated the texture of hard-boiled egg yolks. So, between the two, I was sure I hated runny eggs.

A few years ago, however, I fell in love with the spaghetti carbonara at Otto. And in trying to replicate the dish at home, I discovered that the secret to their version is egg yolks; lots and lots of egg yolks. (Like five yolks and one whole egg.)

Which, in turn, made me think that perhaps I didn’t dislike runny yolks after all. And, in fact, it turns out I don’t. At age 34, I tried eggs Benadict for the first time, and suddenly understood why the dish is so perennially popular. At Landmarc, one of my go-to breakfast meeting spots, I’ve switched to ordering my eggs poached, which smush together particularly well with their diner-style hash browns. (Side note: why does NYC serve breakfast potatoes everywhere instead of real hash browns? Terrible.)

I know I’ve previously observed that simply doing things the way you always do things isn’t a particularly good life strategy, that it makes sense to question our assumptions and look for better ways. But, as with most pieces of life wisdom, it’s easier said than lived.

So perhaps it’s a good reminder of that to discover that I’ve cheated myself out of decades of enjoying a now favorite food. As they say, looks like the yolks on me.