Some people eat to live; I, however, live to eat. I enjoy food – always have!  There are very few foods that I don’t enjoy and that’s probably contributed to my life-long battle with baby fat. (I’m sure there are nicer names for those extra pounds, but I’ve battled them since I was a baby, so…). At any rate, I really like food.  I was a mother’s dream in that regard, because I would not only eat, but would ask for, foods such as asparagus, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, beans, kale, and liver and onions!

               There are only two foods that I don’t typically enjoy. The first is celery. I realize that most people don’t munch on celery for the sheer pleasure of it. Usually I see folks using celery as a vehicle for some better food, such as peanut butter or chive dip. I can get that down, if I have to, but honestly, the celery doesn’t really add much.

               Some people will tell me that celery adds “crunch” to other foods. I’m not sure why we need a textural change in things like chicken salad. And honestly, cooked celery does not provide a crunch in soups.  If I want crunchy chicken, I’d prefer to fry it. And if I really want crunch, then I’m reaching for potato chips. At least that way, I get taste with the crunch.

               This is why I get a little annoyed when restaurants serve food that is mislabeled. When I order, for example, chicken pecan salad, I expect to find a lot of chicken and a reasonable amount of pecans in my dish. If (and when) that chicken salad has a lot of chicken, but someone waved a pecan over it while they were dicing up about 50 pieces of celery to add, then I feel that I’ve been misled. What they are really serving is chicken celery salad and honestly, they should say so!  I’d order the fried bologna instead!

               The other food I’ve never gained a taste for (in fact, I loathe and detest it) is carrots. As a child, we had cooked carrots every Wednesday night, and I had to sit at the table until all the cooked carrots on my plate were gone. Preferably into my stomach. These were long and awful evenings. Often I didn’t get the task done til way after my bedtime. So there I sat, staring at a congealed, nasty carrot pile while I would have gladly tucked away a couple of servings of vinegar spinach or lima beans or sauerkraut.

               This aversion was made worse because my mother would bemoan to all her friends that “Susie will any vegetable at all, except for cooked carrots.” So that meant every time we went to someone’s house for dinner, the hostess would smile tenderly at me and state, “Your mom says you don’t like cooked carrots, but I know you’ll just love mine. I use (fill in the blank here with some noxious food).”

               So, being a child of earlier days, this meant I had to smile in return, choke down the carrots, and then respectfully inform the hostess that I loved her carrots. This insured that (a) my mom would get the recipe and begin cooking carrots with persimmons, or in clam juice, or in one horrible instance, with sardines on top and (b) the hostess would serve them each and every time we dined at her home.

               Now folks have tried to convince me that carrots are one of those wonderful foods that “take on” the flavor of whatever they’re cooked with.  Ha!  They do not. They are vile.

               Plus, they are another food that is considered good filler for things like salads and soups. This gives restaurants and groceries license to, yet again, misrepresent what they are serving. The other day I got some beef barley soup. I love beef. I love gravy. I love barley. It seemed like a good choice.

               There were many pieces of beef in succulent gravy in this soup. There were about ten little kernels of barley. There were also about 45 (okay, there were exactly 45, I counted) chunks of carrots. I know, because I pulled each one out to the side. In my HALF CUP of actual soup, after the carrots were eliminated, I became painfully aware of why they are called “filler.”

               But honestly, why didn’t they name it beef carrot soup?  Then I could have had something else – like fried bologna!

               And let me finish today’s rant by saying that there are other, much more worthy vegetables, to put on veggie trays. Pea pods, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms, jicama…there’s a long list. Enough with the orange and green sticks!