why i hate vegetables, installment #209

when i was young, i lived on a farm full of apple trees, pear trees, raspberry bushes, strawberry patches, and honeysuckle. i can't tell you how many millions of times i reached out my dirty little hand, grabbed one of those dirty little things and stuck it in my dirty little mouth. that's a lot of dirty. and never once did i get sick from pesticides or insects or anything else, if you exclude the diarrhea that little green apples always caused me and my childhood bff and original fag hag, bethie.

fast forward a couple decades, and all the veggies i reluctantly eat are grown in corporate fields and then packaged and, if i'm really lucky and feeling generous with my borrowed cash, has the lie "organic" somewhere on its wrapper. and now, all of a sudden, i'm not allowed to eat anything -- ANYTHING -- without first dousing it in cool water, boiling it 'til it's dead, and spraying it with expensive supermarket "Veggie Spray," which i'm sure you have seen in the produce aisle and which i'm pretty sure is nothing but water, poured into a windex bottle and sold for $5.99.

I HATE YOU, VEGETABLES!

no, actually, i hate the guilt. the horrible corporate guilt of it all, as if failure to wash my food before eating it will be the death of me and i'll have only myself to blame.

so today as i poured some lettuce (unwashed) from a bag onto my plate, sprinkled it with carrot chunks (unwashed, but some manufacturer found the time to cut them into crinkle-cut coins, so i would hope his lazy ass could spritz them with some agua before sealing the bag), and opened a pack of broccoli sprouts, i paused. "rinse thoroughly before eating," read the sprouts packaging. innnnteresting.

now i had a choice: i could wash these sprouts, at which time all the green (and, i assume, healthy) parts would fall off into my sink, and then try to shake the water from them, but inevitably i would fail to truly "dry" the sprouts. then i would put a pile of soggy, ruined, nutrient-ridden sprouts on top of my salad, only to wet everything else on my plate. OR i could risk e.coli or samo-- salma-- ... other diseases and enjoy the crisp, dry, antioxidant-packed sprouts on my salad. i chose the latter.

i want my lean beach body by august, and i don't care if it comes from healthy eating and exercise or if it is simply what's left of me after months of malaria, dengue fever, and food poisoning.

i still hate you, vegetables!