Now I'd like to say that this new found vegetable acceptance was brought on by a sudden maturity of my Cheetos-stunted taste buds. Instead it was the brutal fact that the five year old sitting across the dinner table has better eating habits. Unless you count marinara sauce shirt stains and elbows on the table — which could go against either of us on any given night.
Totally unprompted or otherwise coerced by my wife, I actually purchased produce at a grocery store this weekend. Sure I also bought hot dogs, potato chips (derived from a vegetable) and Oktoberfest beer (with pumpkin-infused hops, thus a second cousin once removed from a vegetable). OK, I also threw a Slim Jim into the shopping cart.
The point is I handpicked a yellow squash without a grocery list in the other hand.
While this might seem like small potatoes, or actually genus Cucurbita, this was a monumental moment for someone who often considers fried, fatty, fiery, and red dye #7 the four food groups. After all, I grew up in the widening shadow of the Happy Meal and President Reagan declaring ketchup a school lunch vegetable. America: land of the free 80 ounce soft drink refill. Give us your huddled masses of zucchini and we'll deep fry the hell out of them.
A gastronomic glutton for bad food punishment, I wasn't raised resistant to all root vegetables or side dishes grown from a seed. As a kid, I dutifully downed green beans, corn, broccoli and asparagus. Although I did balk at beets and cringed at cauliflower.
Squashes, however, really made me squirm in my seat at the dinner table. Acorn, Butternut, Spaghetti, Buttercup, Delicata and Hubbard — eating fleshy gourd innards made my skin crawl and stomach turn. So I shifted the squash around my plate, hid it in napkins and hoped my mom didn't question why the bottom of my milk glass had turned an awful shade of yellow.
Of course no one tells a nearly 40 year old man to eat his vegetables because children are starving in China. Nor was my squash change of heart prompted by a visit to the cardiologist or any other doctor. Instead it was the sight of my daughter drinking the watery residue from a bowl of steamed broccoli; a visual that could repulse or inspire.
So from here on out my daily food pyramid will include a building block of vegetables. Unfortunately the high fructose corn syrup and brominated vegetable oil in Mountain Dew are not considered two servings. At least the vending machine at work contains Strawberry Pop Tarts — that counts as a fruit, right?
My increased veggie consumption is also part of a carb credit system. It is similar to carbon credits and emission trading that sets limits or caps on an amount of pollutant. Except for the fact that I deal in nutty doughnuts instead of greenhouse gases. It's just a small way to reduce the depth of my carbon based life form footprint.
After my latest fried cake run, however, I doubt I'm carb neutral.
If I want to keep up with the five year old at the dinner table — or anywhere else for that matter — I better squash the side trips to the bakery and stick to genus Cucurbita with a little butter.
Grand Traverse Herald editor Garret Leiva can be reached at 933-1416 or e-mail gleiva@gtherald.com