Challenge accepted: vegetables

It’s no surprise to any of you that I hate almost all vegetables. There are a select few that I actually enjoy (corn and potatoes), and others that I tolerate (broccoli, spinach, carrots, cucumber), but I hate all the rest. Even those that I tolerate are really just vehicles for ranch dressing or goat cheese and olive oil. I know vegetables are healthy and that (wo)man cannot live by fruit and bread alone, but I every time I force myself to choke down a bite of dry broccoli I feel like I’m punishing myself for some terrible wrongdoing.

Dear readers, you should feel privileged that I’ve been so vocal about my antivegetablism in my column, because it’s not a secret I like to give away. My immediate friends and family know, but despising vegetables is not something that makes you a welcome dinner guest or a great lunch partner, especially in a city with as many ethnic and offbeat food choices as Boston. In high school, one of my best friends was born in Romania, and her mother often cooked Romanian food at home. But because she knew I was picky, she’d relay a message through my friend days ahead to make sure whatever she was cooking was Jill-friendly. I hated feeling like such an asshole in someone else’s home.

As a result, I kept my feelings about vegetables to myself and became an accomplished scavenger, able to pick out all the onions and peas and still end up with a full meal. I always thought that this was a less rude solution than asking the cook to please, leave out the onions, mushrooms, peas, peppers,  and maybe all the vegetables while you’re at it, because I am picky and unable to handle it. But it occurred to me that leaving my host with a plate full of uneaten veggies is just as rude and probably disgusting.

So sometimes, I will eat the vegetables. I’ll eat the peas in the pot roast, closing my eyes and imagining that they’re just little rainbows. Once, at a pre-prom party, my friend’s mother had cooked us a fancy dinner, and the first course was a thick cheese soup. I picked up a chunk in the soup with my spoon, assuming it was a potato. But the bite had that horrible crunch and sweetness of an onion and my eyes started watering and I had to chew and chew and chew and try my hardest not to spit it out. It turned out it was actually an apple, but that’s how much I hate onions. My body’s reaction is to GET IT OUT. There’s a reason kids avoid vegetables unless they’re disguised as something else. There’s a reason they spit those peas out on the ground. Kids are not going to sugarcoat that shit. Vegetables are terrible.

However. I’m not a kid. I shouldn’t allow spinach to be my only green vegetable (I’m not allowed to count basil, right?). My mom is dealing with many newly acquired food allergies, and her doctor said that eating a lot of the same foods early in life can result in allergies later in life. How cruel is that, dear body? Developing allergies to the things you love to eat most? I love ice cream and flour too much to let that happen.

I’ll admit that while some of my opinions of vegetables are backed up by copious research and dry heaving, others are based on nothing whatsoever. I don’t think I’ve ever had Brussels sprouts, but they definitely look like something rabbits should ingest, not humans. The same goes for kale—something that bitter should be banished to the side of the plate with the sprig of parsley where it belongs. In trying to decide what to write about this week, one of my roommates started quizzing me about vegetables:  which I like, and which I refuse to eat. “You should do a vegetable challenge,” she said. Well then. CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

Once a week or so, I’ll try to put down that haterade and pick up a new vegetable. I’m going to try and find palatable recipes for veggie side dishes and if I survive that, I’ll move on to main dishes. This is not to say that I’m becoming a vegetarian—I love bacon way too much for that—but I’m shouldering the spear of asparagus and trying to keep my six-year-old self from stomping her feet too much.