Vegetable chills

Last night, during dinner, I realized something. I despise vegetables. Well, not vegetables themselves, but eating them. I have never met a vegetable that I like. I went through the list, even going back to my childhood days eating veggies fresh from the garden. Broccoli? No. Yellow squash, zucchini, eggplant? No. Spinach, carrots, celery, cucumbers? No, no, no! There are definitely some that I can tolerate more than others, but none that I ever really want to eat.

The vegetables that I had last night for dinner were really good, by vegetable standards. (Trust me, vegetable standards are much lower than all of my other standards). Green beans, red peppers, a few roasted red potatoes in a delicate butter sauce. They were seasoned just right with a touch of salt and pepper, and were the perfect compliment to my onion burger...but still, I had to choke them down. I had eaten quite a decent amount of them, dutifully surviving every pain staking bite, when I had to stop. I got the vegetable chills. The shakes from the shoulders down through my core that are always my cue to drop my fork and dispose of the veggies. No matter how many vitamins are in there and how much I want to be healthy, I know that if I don't stop immediately after the first chill, then these vegetables will make me sick.

The truth is that my relationship with vegetables really makes me angry, because just as certainly as I despise eating my vegetables, there are people out there who like them. I am jealous of those people. Those lucky people for whom a fresh from the garden, crisp, sugar snap pea is as good as candy. People who have to use will power to not eat all of the veggies that they are cutting up for a veggie platter. I want to be them! I want to bring hummus and cucumbers to work for lunch, and actually look forward to eating it. Instead, I am the poor soul who knows how great vegetables are, and yet, gets the vegetable chills. Yet one more shred of evidence to prove that life's not fair.