Veggies

June 8, 2015

Greetings from the garden,

I was raised in an era that held a few fundamental tenets:

1.      If you sit too close to the TV you will ruin your eyes.

2.      Don’t run with scissors.

3.      Eat everything on your plate and you can and then you can go out and play.

#3 was a challenge for a variety of reasons.  When dinner was served it was often in the middle of a ‘Kick the Can’ championship, or the final battle between GI Joe and GI Joe with Kung Fu Grip, so getting through the meal expeditiously was imperative.  Secondly, dinner was not always comprised of ‘kid friendly’ menu items. To give you some context, I grew up when Tang, ice milk, and Mrs. Paul’s Fish Sticks were gourmet extravagances. 

My mother is a good cook, but she was faced with the challenge of feeding five children on a tight budget, with the goal of giving us the nutrition we needed to become the Nobel Prize Laureates we were destined to be.  Or at the very minimum to go outside and stay outside so she could have five minutes of quiet.

What occurred to me this morning is that vegetables were always the enemy.  I could hack my way through pot roast or pork chops or Salisbury steak, I could spread apple sauce around on the  plate, or push a hard roll off the table for the dog to gnaw on.  But vegetables were impossible to avoid or spread thin enough to disguise, and the dog would not consider them.

I was raised in the city so vegetables came to me in cans and frozen bags, other than potatoes, which for some reason were kept in a dusty bag in the bottom of the laundry closet where they could mutate. Vegetables were the last thing eaten at dinner, usually cold and gelatinous, the one thing that stood between me and the freedom to be outside where I could fulfill my can-kicking destiny.

They appeared on my plate in these ways:  Mashed potatoes.  Boiled carrots.  Boiled turnips. Boiled rutabega. Boiled Brussel sprouts. Boiled tomatoes.  Spinach cooked into the consistency of whatever bog-monsters were made of.  Peas, which were designed to make mashed potatoes more interesting.  French Cut Green Beans. (That’s how the Jolly Green Giant raised them.)  There was occasionally celery, but that was for company and was usually lined with Cheez Whiz. 

That’s it.  I’ll spare you the research, just trust me, these are all the vegetables there were in the 60’s.  Since that innocent time, somehow science has invented a whole slew of new vegetables.

Artichokes for example.  First of all, who was the first person to think an artichoke would be edible?  Have you SEEN these things?  Second of all, edible things should not have the word ‘choke’ in them.  And that’s just the beginning of the new generation of vegetables to torment kids.

Kohlrabi, which I would have sworn was the capital of Qatar. Arugula.  Beets. Tomatoes; the real ones, not the pulp that came in the can. Lettuce and spinach and kale. Radishes. Cabbage. Cauliflower. Asparagus. Broccoli. I know there’s more, but I’m getting dizzy just considering it.

Because, theoretically, I’m an adult, I’m supposed to understand that these are all good for me.  I’m supposed to grasp that these vegetables, fresh and unprocessed, are full of vitamins which will help me grow up into the Nobel Laureate I was meant to be.  Plus vegetables contain betalains, lycopene, carotenoid, quercetin, anthocyanins, folates and riboflavin, which evidently are nutrients I need and not the capitals of middle eastern countries I can’t find on a map.

But I still think twice about vegetables.  I know they can taste good, and intuitively I know they are good for me.  But some instincts are hard to suppress.  I am trying, but part of me still is trying to work anti-veggie gambits at the lonely dining room table while the rest of the world gets to watch Jonny Quest on TV.

I imagine that if all of these vegetables existed when I was a kid, I would still be sitting at the kitchen table, never to go outside again.  Decades would have passed, spiders would have draped a tent over me, and my life would become an eternal stand-off against a wilted kohlrabi and arugula casserole with quinoa dressing.

I’m lucky to have vegetarians in my life who can share their passion for the plants we should eat, including onions, which I am pretty sure taste that way so we won’t be tempted to eat them.  I am getting better at including the good green stuff to my diet, in part because it’s my idea.  I make my own deals; I can go outside and play anytime I want, in theory.  I suppose if I want that opportunity to last, I need to invest in as many betalains as I can manage.

Hope this finds you eating right,

David