Vegetables

People like to assume I hate all vegetables. This is simply not true...I hate all ASIANS, not vegetables. Hiyoooooooooo!! I actually like MANY vegetables, but I just don't think of them. When I sit down at a table I think of three things: meat, cheese, bread. Well, and potatoes. But the potato was so prevalent in my house that not only did it not count as a vegetable in the eyes of my parents; I don't think it even counted as food. Mashed for dinner, boiled for lunch, baked on the weekend. Potato chops, potato kebabs, potato toothpaste. But the fact is, I like several vegetables.

POTATOES: as I said, a staple. Mashed, boiled, baked, fried, skinned, whatever. Anyone who knows me has heard my screed on what NOT to put in mashed potatoes, so I won't say it again. Only type I don’t like are scalloped potatoes. Ugh. Gross. Maybe cause it has seafood in the name - would I eat catfished potatoes either? Nyet. When I was a young buck my mother would make mashed potatoes, then lay them in a casserole dish. Put several pats of butter throughout along with some paprika, then bake...a crust would form at the top. MMMM!! I remember as a kid saving the crust for the end. "Something to look forward to." Even at age 6 I knew it was either gonna be success in a career, success in a family, or the crust on top of the baked mashed potatoes. Sigh. Life. Also, is there an easier way to make something faux-classy than the twice-baked potato? Have a hot girl coming over for a date and mention you'll be making mashed potatoes? She'll turn up her nose. Baked potato? L-O-S-E-R. But if you tell her you'll bake the potato and then mash the insides before stuffing the guts back in? Oooooohhhh yeah...those will not be the only guts bein got into that night, friend.

GREEN BEANS: like em. Outta the can is fine. Don't make that cream of mushroom/onions shit, just gimme the damn beans. Fine right outta the field too (see: "snaps.") Nothing exciting about green beans, I reckon. Tho I do remember when my mother went into the hospital to give birth to my younger brother and my dad immediatley went out and bought the hugest can of green beans he could find; this fucker had to be like ten pounds, a fucking barrel of green beans. A typical move from a guy of his generation, not familiar with the goings on of a kitchen. "I'd better get the biggest tub of green beans I can find; I have no idea how much these little people eat, and besides what if we get attacked by the British? Hell, I can bury someone in this thing..." of course a decade later when we were selling our house what did we find in the darkest depths of the pantry? Untouched, unopened barrel of green beans.

CORN: same thing. outta the can, great, whatever. Love corn on the cob too; tho to be honest gets lost in the shuffle on a cookout. My head awash in dreams of burgers and hot dogs, I can't be bothered to do cartwheels about the corn. Don't do creamed corn either. Just gimme the damn corn straight up. Can remember many an hour on the back steps shuckin corn, furious re: never gettin all the damned silk off. and wouldn't you be pissed if you're corn, cruising along, feeling good that for centuries you are a big part of keeping generations of species alive, including humans, being a real staple for civilizations, and then you become synonymous with something whose definition is :

"a horny induration or callosity of the epidermis, usually with a central core, formed esp. on the toes or feet and caused by undue pressure or friction."

"Thanks guys," Corn must think. Where where all the corn lobbyists when this went down? wtf?

BROCCOLI: here comes a shocker....broccoli don't bother me. However, I mean barely-steamed, fresh practically raw broccoli. Don't cook it/steam it forever or dump crap on it; raw I'll eat it. Mostly I'll eat it though to get bonus points - "wow, Xmas is eating broccoli! Have another piece of chicken, Xmas!!" It's a performance. I'm a showman - if you notice I'll get some broccoli, make a show of waving my plate around so everyone sees it, then immediately wolf it down. Get it over with so I can settle in and get to the real food. I like my broccoli like I like my sex: raw and tasteless, and just like sex I'll pretend to eat all day if that's what it takes to get that 4th breast.

CARROTS: again...hand me a raw carrot, I'll eat it no problem. But don't fucking start putting it in the food. People love to put carrots in fucking everything. Soup, stew, casseroles, "I can't go to bed until I've put 7 lbs of carrots in everything today." The problem with carrots as opposed to, say, peas, is you can FEEL carrots. Bite into your Shepards pie, BAM! carrot. fuck. Take another bite HEYHEYHEY! ... carrot. Crunch. Worst ever being ordering egg foo young bout a year ago and ta-da!! carrots!?!?!?!?!!!!! thanks a lot Miso Horny. DON'T MIX CARROTS UP WITH THE REAL FOOD! And who came up with carrots being good for the eyes - did they ironically choose carrots for this since the very rabbits that are famous for loiving carrots have big ears? "Ooooh, professor, that's deep....you're right, THIS guy woulda been too obvious...."














PEAS: surprisingly, I like peas. Growing up, all I knew were the frozen ones: big, dark, round. Still like em, but I've grown to like them outta the can too. I'm fine with peas, but don't start putting those little round onions in with them.

TOMATO: tomatoes are okay. I like the little round ones in a salad. I don't like them on a burger, they just get hot and slimy. I'll take it off, along with the lettuce and eat it after the burger. "Salad." Mayo that's dripped off the burger onto your hands/mouth/plates? "Salad dressing." Britney's drapes finally matching the carpet? "Priceless."

SPINACH: I'll eat spinach as long as it looks like lettuce. At least try to fool me. But I grew up down south where they take it and insist on beating it too a pulp, making it look like baby-shit with vinegar. Also have bad memories of elementary school lunches, dudes stuffing it in straws with other smushed vegetables and playing with it. Ugh. Never understood the game of "let's gross each other out with food!!" No thanks.

SALAD: we can throw together lettuce and cucumbers here. I like a nice salad. Gives me something to chew on while waiting for the food to come. I remember my first ever salad bar as a kid, at The Steak House down home. Burger and baked potato on the way, we'd hit the salad bar. Rote by regimen: lettuce, some round tomatoes, croutons, cucumbers, shredded cheese, and then 11 pounds of bacon bits. Nice. My favorite dressing now is ranch, which I didn’t know existed til I went to college. Growing up I thought "salad dressing" was "french dressing." No idea why, but that's all we ever had at my house.

There's a bunch of others I DONT like, but I feel like I can make it on the above vegetables no problem. Well, if I ate them more than once a century. When I was about 7, a neighbor bought the lot next to us. About 2 acres I guess. He made a deal with my brother and I: if we helped him clear half of it for his garden, we'd have free reign to play all we wanted on the other half. So after many Saturdays of digging/clearing/dating, my brother and I had what would be for ten years our existence. Seemed bigger than a football field; we'd spend bought every second of our days playing either baseball of football on it (basketball goal was already in the backyard.) We had our own young bucks' paradise, and it is not lost on me that it was all possible because of vegetables. Sweet, awful, leafy irony.