My Vegetable Challenge

I can’t tell you how many times I have people tell me, “Oh, I don’t eat [insert vegetable]. I don’t like that.”

You know what I hear when someone says that? I hear, “I’ve never had [insert vegetable] prepared well, and I’m afraid to try this based on my poor experiences.”

I then take this as a challenge to make the person eat whatever vegetable they told me they don’t like, and I rarely meet with defeat on that challenge.

On Saturday, I cooked at Home Base Youth Services‘ (HBYS) Nicholas Transitional Living Facility with the scholars from Boys Hope Girls Hope of Arizona (BHGH). When I arrived, I found that the menu for the night didn’t include a single vegetable, and I took it upon myself to provide a vegetable for the residents of HBYS.

As the BHGH scholars were dishing up the meal we prepared for the HBYS residents, one of the residents said, “I don’t want any vegetables. I don’t like them.” He and I then had a brief conversation in which I explained the health benefits, promised him that they tasted great, and finally resorted to using guilt by telling him that he’d hurt my feelings if he didn’t at least try the collard greens. The guilt worked, and he took some collard greens.

10 minutes later, that same resident was back for seconds…of the collard greens.

In fact, several of the HBYS residents came up after they had eaten to discuss the collard greens and how much they enjoyed them.

Vegetables are actually quite tasty, and provide a nice diversity of flavors and textures that accompany other foods very well. You’d be surprised how often I get people to eat vegetables with no other spices than salt and pepper, and you should see the look on people’s faces when “salt and pepper” is the response to them asking, astonished, “This is fantastic. What spices did you put in this?”

So, if you think you don’t like vegetables, please give them another try. If you don’t like them prepared a certain way you’ve had them in the past, then don’t make them that way. Find a new recipe (the Internet has so many recipes for all vegetables) and experiment. You may be pleasantly surprised that something so vital to your health can actually taste pretty darn good.