I've got enough gazpacho for everyone!
Jun. 17th, 2010 12:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kleenexwomanSo I'm playing D&D at a friend's house, and he is courteous enough to cook a meal for everyone coming over--broiled steaks, pasta with pesto, and pizza rolls for appetizers. After dinner, everyone is sitting around preparing their characters, and he asks, "Does anyone want more? Steak? Pasta? ...Salad, perhaps?"
Everyone murmurs that they'd like more pasta and pizza rolls, and I say, "Salad sounds great. Let me do something?" He looks slightly flummoxed, so I decide that I will go ahead and make my own salad, because he has the pizza rolls and pasta covered, and they are fairly simple, but assembling a salad can be labor-intenstive. While he does that, I go rummage around in the vegetable drawer. I find some big fat sugar snap peapods, baby tomatoes, baby bell peppers, and cucumbers, and slice up a few things and arrange them on a plate, like so:
He was impressed. "Very orderly!"
"Do you want me to make you one?" I asked.
He shook his head. "I don't eat vegetables."
"No...vegetables? Ever?" I munched. The peas were delicious, the cucumbers okay. The tomatoes had suffered somewhat from being in the fridge (tomatoes do NOT go in the fridge, they lose flavor), but the peppers were tasty and really cool.
"Here's how I think of it," he explained, as we went back into the living room. "Meat...is good. Vegetables are the opposite of meat. Therefore, vegetables are bad."
I was going to argue that his premise AND reasoning AND conclusion was all wrong, because it would have been one of the few times I would have been able to out-argue this particular friend, but then we started the game and outwitting Daleks was more of a priority than discussing nutrition.
But what the fuck? We are not talking about someone who lives in a food desert and has no access to fresh foods or time to cook; we are talking about an upper-middle-class person who clearly knows how to cook and has been doing so for a while, whose parents had a wide range of ingredients and pre-packaged foods in their fridge and pantry. The sad thing is that this is not the first friend I have had who has utterly despised vegetables and refused to eat them on what appears to be general principle. (And it's usually geeks, and it's usually geek guys, at least in terms of people who've actually announced this as though it's something to be proud of.)
I don't get it. Not all vegetables taste the same, not all of them have the same texture. A bell pepper feels and tastes different from a cucumber from a carrot from romaine lettuce. Why all vegetables? Does anyone have any insight on this phenomenon? Some sort of food-related rebellion or trauma? Unusual sensitivity to fiber? Misguided machismo?
Everyone murmurs that they'd like more pasta and pizza rolls, and I say, "Salad sounds great. Let me do something?" He looks slightly flummoxed, so I decide that I will go ahead and make my own salad, because he has the pizza rolls and pasta covered, and they are fairly simple, but assembling a salad can be labor-intenstive. While he does that, I go rummage around in the vegetable drawer. I find some big fat sugar snap peapods, baby tomatoes, baby bell peppers, and cucumbers, and slice up a few things and arrange them on a plate, like so:
He was impressed. "Very orderly!"
"Do you want me to make you one?" I asked.
He shook his head. "I don't eat vegetables."
"No...vegetables? Ever?" I munched. The peas were delicious, the cucumbers okay. The tomatoes had suffered somewhat from being in the fridge (tomatoes do NOT go in the fridge, they lose flavor), but the peppers were tasty and really cool.
"Here's how I think of it," he explained, as we went back into the living room. "Meat...is good. Vegetables are the opposite of meat. Therefore, vegetables are bad."
I was going to argue that his premise AND reasoning AND conclusion was all wrong, because it would have been one of the few times I would have been able to out-argue this particular friend, but then we started the game and outwitting Daleks was more of a priority than discussing nutrition.
But what the fuck? We are not talking about someone who lives in a food desert and has no access to fresh foods or time to cook; we are talking about an upper-middle-class person who clearly knows how to cook and has been doing so for a while, whose parents had a wide range of ingredients and pre-packaged foods in their fridge and pantry. The sad thing is that this is not the first friend I have had who has utterly despised vegetables and refused to eat them on what appears to be general principle. (And it's usually geeks, and it's usually geek guys, at least in terms of people who've actually announced this as though it's something to be proud of.)
I don't get it. Not all vegetables taste the same, not all of them have the same texture. A bell pepper feels and tastes different from a cucumber from a carrot from romaine lettuce. Why all vegetables? Does anyone have any insight on this phenomenon? Some sort of food-related rebellion or trauma? Unusual sensitivity to fiber? Misguided machismo?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-17 06:20 pm (UTC)I would so not be surprised. Some kids are so stubborn about that for so long...my little brother went through a phase where he wouldn't eat anything that wasn't off-white or beige, but my mom just ended up making a lot of cauliflower, mashed rutabaga, and white grapes. (Then he converted to tacos and now he won't eat anything that isn't doused in hot sauce.)
I swear I read an article on Salon or something with exactly this--some story about how the writer's child refused to eat the skin on fish until their grandfather pointed out that when he was a child, he went hungry for days at a time and would have been ecstatic to find some tasty fish skins to eat.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-23 07:49 am (UTC)You ever notice that most of those geek boys who turn up their noses at veggies (but not french fries) usually end up quite overweight? Either that or they get poor/a girlfriend and eat what they're given.
But wow, I'll tell ya... I never thought I'd eat what I've been eating since getting to college. Some of it comes from not being able to stomach cereal for dinner (again) and deciding to try the campus dining hall entree -- and then enjoying it. Brussell Sprouts were like that.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-23 07:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-24 03:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-23 09:16 pm (UTC)Weren't you trying to get Todd to like veggies? Getting people out of their food comfort zone is difficult :( I think I got my own boyfriend to like Thai food, which I'm pleased about.
Central always had the worst veggie dishes--everything was Aramark, and by the time I got to the food the veggies had been sitting in the steam tray for hours and were mushy. Was Alma better?
Since moving here, I've actually been trying a lot of new veggies, especially greens--the lady at the grocery store I go to will push Brussels sprouts or kale on me and tell me exactly how to prepare them.