Eating My Greens

My mum is an incredible baker. She makes, hands down, the best apple tart I’ve ever eaten. Any time I’m out at somewhere for a meal and apple pie is on the desert, I tend to order it, just out of curiosity, but it never even comes close enough to make me sad it isn’t mum’s. And it’s not just apple tart, though that will always be my favourite. Buns, sponge cakes, trifles. She bakes Christmas fruit cake for half the village. She’s even done wedding cakes for cousins and neighbours. 

When it comes to desert, I grew up well fed and spoilt for choice. 

But I also grew up hating broccoli and Brussels sprouts. I thought steak was dry and chewy, made slightly more palatable when fried with onions. We had weekly boiled ham and cabbage until we were old enough to rebel.

As a kid, I hated potatoes. I hated them boiled or mashed. Roasted was acceptable, but they only got made for Christmas or Easter dinner, and I adored mum’s turkey and ham special dinners. 

So, imagine my surprise when I learned that you can cook steak to varying degrees, and medium was delicious, until I had medium-rare, and it was even more delicious! The joy in discovering you can roast broccoli and Brussels sprouts, and that they were flipping delicious like that! Imagine my cognitive dissonance when, as a grown man in his late 30’s (or possibly shortly after…) I cooked sprouts for the first time and ate most of them straight off the oven pan with a spoon, just horsing them into my mouth while I waited for the rest of the meal to finished cooking. 

Potatoes are delicious boiled with a few cloves of garlic, and mashed with a lot of butter!

In the Before Times, I made broccoli for some friends who very clearly accepted them with the polite side-eye glances of people who did not like broccoli at all, then asked for more five minutes later. Roasted, with soy sauce, ginger and garlic. 

I love my mum. I love her deserts and Christmas dinners. 

But I love my roasted veggies, and so does Claire. What about my kids? Not subjected to boiled mush, do they enjoy crunchy veggie flavour bombs?

Not a fucking chance. The little bastards won’t touch them, and scream if they find any on their plate. 

I’d be upset, except, more for me!