Saturday, March 21, 2009

the can can't

I read that First Lady Obama is planting a vegetable and herb garden on the South Lawn. Bravo, Michelle!

I like most vegetables; I even love many vegetables. FRESH vegetables. The other night we had fresh asparagus. Delicate, tender green shoots, steamed for just a couple of minutes. Buttered and salted, they are divine.

Then hubby and I started a vegetable discussion. We talked about what our mothers served us as kids. What were billed as vegetables, out of a can, should be outlawed.

The peas tasted like regurgitation.
Pickled beets were candidates for prison food.
And asparagus, perhaps the worst of all, gagged me every time.

What was it about the 1950's and 60's that caused mothers to embrace canned vegetables? They were - and are - ghastly, I tell you. They tasted like cans, not vegetables, and that couldn't be nutritious. If cost was a consideration, better to buy one asparagus spear per person than to force the canned variety on us. Or grow some real vegetables, for Pete's sake. For all our sakes.

I'll eat baked beans from a can. That's about it. I'm so glad I'm a grown-up now. No one makes me eat canned vegetables and I made it my policy as a mother never to force canned vegetables on my kids. Did I?

Do you have a nasty-vegetable memory?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here, here! I agree wholeheartedly to a ban on the canned.

My nasty-vegetable memory is the nasty canned spinach they used to serve weekly in school lunches. When I was in kindergarten, my mom cooked down fresh spinach (that our neighbor grew) and it tasted nothing like that.

LPool said...

Fresh, fresh, fresh is the way to go wholeheartedly. I'm looking at my garden now with the corn inching it's way up, green and yellow beans and beets just pulling their heads out of the soil. But what is it with Lima Beans? In my humble opinion, they are like liver...no matter what you do it it they still taste like lima beans. Yuck!!

Jenny Haller said...

I agree. Anything from a can tastes like a can.

Jenny Haller said...

I don't remember you serving us much (if any) canned food. Some frozen veggies, but most of the time it was fresh produce. Yum!
-Dan