Once upon a time, a young woman walked around London one warm Saturday evening and searched in vain for somewhere to eat. Oh yes, she dismissed the lovely looking Italian because she didn’t like pasta. She walked straight passed the Pizza Place because she didn’t like cheese. She wandered by when she saw the French restaurant because they don’t know how to cook their meat!
And so on and so forth, until she came across a crappy chain of Garfunkel’s and tucked into a small steak and stringy chips that had neither character or indeed taste.
The same woman was once a young girl who did not eat her greens, and was told by siblings and friends that she would end up getting scurvy through lack of vitamins circulating through her body. Her mother took her to the doctor to surreptitiously beg him to give her a severe health warning about her appalling diet. His response? “I knew someone who lived off baked beans and dried toast!”
Very helpful.
This woman has moved on. She eats cheese (when it is melted, apart from goat’s cheese which is more than acceptable to her palette. She eats tomatoes but only when they are mushed. She eats peppers and onions, mushrooms and ................. oh dearie me, that’s where it ends. She might sneak a smashed aubergine passed her lips or a small piece of chopped carrots but only when it is severely disguised through other flavours in the dish.
Quite honestly, she’s a bit pathetic and she knows it.
She wishes that she could love the flavour of fish and cheese and red wine and lettuce leaves and raw tomatoes and runner beans and eggs and vegetable soup and peas. Oh yes, let’s not forget those insipid little monsters that have been the bane of her life and have become the symbol for her idiosyncrasies.
But seriously, what is it that makes someone so potty? What is that makes someone unable to try let alone enjoy these sweet savours?
Sometimes I genuinely worry about it. Now there is a surprise for anyone who knows me!
I’d love to be able to devour fruit with the same enthusiasm I hold for a bar of Galaxy. I’d love to be able to make up a vegetable stir fry and delight in the crispness of the un-e-colied beansprouts. I’d love to be able to walk down the High Street and not have to dismiss every other restaurant because the challenge to find something for me to eat may be too great.
Is it the taste, the look, the texture or just plain obstinacy? Why does it fill me with fear? It’s not really normal is it?
The bonus for those around her is that they manage to pick up an additional pot of deliciousness as she slides salads and vegetables away from her plate for them to consume!
Of course, my vegetable issues are somewhat extreme but it did make me giggle a little when I read this article on the weekend from Stewart Lee.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/12/stewart-lee-vegetables-fruit-bad?INTCMP=SRCH
He’s a strange bloke, our Stewart, but has the most incredibly quirky sense of humour.
Is his admission to not eating any fruit or vegetables merely a comic exaggeration? Somehow I doubt it. I could quite imagine Mr. Lee not eating vegetables unless they are bound into a curry, chilli or lasagne in the way that I do.
But it did make me laugh when he said
“What actual evidence is there for the benefits of vegetables, the worms of the food world, scrabbling in the dirt, or of fruits, hanging limply from branches, like plastic bags full of dog excrement hurled into the trees of an East Anglian layby?.......................... What evidence is there for the supposedly health-giving properties of these soil-encrusted tubers and these repulsive, squashy sacks of sticky juice and seed? Isn't it time we rejected fruits and vegetables?
And I really love his thoughts on David Cameron’s true diet, and his reasons behind them.
Secretly, Cameron exists solely on a diet of nothing but Eton mess, a dessert concocted from strawberries, cream, meringue, mess and pieces of digestives left over from the historic "biscuit game", still played in Eton dormitories on the day of the costly school's annual cricket contest against Winchester College. But, typically, while Cameron guzzles the mess of the elite, he expects you and I to suck our nourishment from the dirt.
So funny!
And then there is his comment about his lack of fruit and vegetable consumption.
I never eat fruits or vegetables at all, ever, and neither did my father before me, and while I am constipated, fat, breathless and weak, I am not yet dead. I can still manage to slither across the floor to my laptop every day to dribble out my interesting thoughts for money.
But my favourite comment from the article, apart from the one about Berlusconi inviting vegetables into his house, but be assured it was only to be in a lasagne, was his comment about the people who eat vegetables.
Eating fruit and vegetables keeps you simple and stupid. It is no coincidence that they are the favoured foodstuff of athletes and sports people, simpletons who can be tricked into leaping and running upon the sound of a pistol, for no obvious practical purpose.
I’m feeling better already!
..............................................................
Of course, Stewart is wrong. There is plenty of evidence that fruit and vegetables are vital to our wellbeing and a source of many a nutrient that we cannot possibly acquire from other more tempting foods that we mange on. And whilst I may have been a little smug about the fact that I was far from likely to be contaminated by a water-cress, cucumber and bean sprout salad during the most recent of e-coli outbreaks, it is hardly a worthwhile argument for continued abstinence.
No comments:
Post a Comment