My mom is a good cook. She can cook a MEAN Mexican meal. Which is weird because she can’t cook German food. And she’s German!
White people are weird.
As delicious as our meals were growing up, they were not particularly healthy.
In fact, they were not healthy at all.
Almost everything was breaded and fried and smothered in lard. Portion control? WHAT? Are you kidding me? You must have seconds! And thirds! No thirds? ARE YOU STARVING YOURSELF AGAIN?
Vegetables were never served.
Except! Every once in a while, my parents would go on a “You’re going to eat vegetables!” kick and they would force us to eat vegetables.
And by “vegetables” I mean “peas or corn.”
One night, we’d sit down for meatloaf and my Mom would be all “We’re having peas (corn?) tonight. And you have to eat them until their gone!”
I would start crying. My brothers and sister would start crying.
“We hate peas! Peas are gross!” We’d cry.
“Well, you’re gonna learn to like them! They’re good for you!”
Because I am very smart, I figured out that I didn’t have to actually eat the peas. I could put a bunch of peas in my mouth and swallow them down with water. Like pills!
It worked for a while. Until my mom decided that eating peas that way was cheating. I had to actually chew and taste the peas!
(Which to this day, I do not understand.)
One time, my mom pulled the “you have to chew them” crap with corn. CORN! Here’s the thing, corn makes me gag. (I’m a texture girl, remember?) I warned her. “They make me gag! I can’t chew them!” She had no mercy. “CHEW YOUR CORN!”
I chewed my corn.
And then I threw it all up.
Because of this traumatic childhood experience, I rebelled against ALL vegetables in my teenage and young adult years. It was very troublesome to my husband who could live off of vegetables. He’d beg me to try them and I’d be like “vegetables are gross” and he’d be all “but zucchini is delicious! You have to taste it at least once!” and I’d have flash backs to when I was forced! to! chew! peas! AND corn! and I’d be all “NEVER!”
I’m happy to report that I was able to get over the Traumatic Vegetable Experience of my childhood and have learned to eat and enjoy vegetables. I’m even happier to say I’ve been able to teach my children to (mostly) enjoy (some) vegetables.
Except for peas. I have not been able to put one in my mouth since the last time I was forced to eat them. And no child of mine has ever nor will ever be forced to put one of those little satan veggies in their mouth.
Pea H8R 4LIFE.
Have you tried sugar snap peas, raw, and still in the pod? They are sweet and crunchy and NOTHING like what our moms used to make us eat.
(My mom only made peas or corn too! From a can! BARF!)
I hated peas too. Even now I don’t like them much but RAW peas. Now they are yummy.
I’m not sure if you are one of those beet haters but let me tell you… roasted beets are like candy. so good and good FOR YOU!
My mom made me have veggies with each meal… Canned ones… And I HAD to eat them… Now I only serve fresh veggies to the kids, but sometimes, I just skip them… The childhood trauma is just too powerful… But I still serve them to my kids, because I’m the mom, and I can! They like veggies though…
Y, first – hooray for blogging! THESE are the blog posts I miss, the random, not deep, just because posts. It takes the fun out of it when you feel like you can’t do the just because stuff… just because you want to! It’s your blog! KEEP WRITING PLEASE!! 🙂
Now, veggies. I swear that everyone’s view on veggies is sooo centered on how you grow up. We ate veggies at probably every other meal when I was a kid – problem is, it was ALWAYS:
a) green beans from a can,
b) corn from a can, or
c) spinach from a can.
Always one or two from that list. I loved them growing up and I will still eat any of those three anytime they’re in front of me, but because they were the only ones I was exposed to it has been SO hard as a grown up to convince myself to eat other veggies. I never even had peas and carrots (blech and blech) til I was in college. Same with squash and eggplant, but those I fell in love with. Never had broccoli til I got married… that one grew on me after a few years, now I love it. (The baby I’m carrying right now though, does not!)
My hubby also could live on veggies and has been instrumental in my trying new things. I am also grateful for that because I know he will help make sure our kids get WAY more exposure to veggies than I ever did 🙂
Oh I hated peas when I was a kid, but that was because they were canned peas. You really really need to try fresh peas right off the vine! I grow just enough for me to eat a few pods a day (sharing with the dog of course!) I don’t eat the pods, I just walk around the yard shelling them and eating the little baby peas. So yummy. I have even learned to like frozen peas, as long as they are only cooked just enough to be warmed. No mushy peas!
Hey, you made me laugh. Works for me 😛
Agreed Y, sugar snap peas are really nothing at all like the peas you’re talking about. you eat them in the pods so they look a little like green beans and they are REALLY SWEET and crisp and delicious. I would never, however, try to convince you to eat those nasty round gross little green balls known as plain old peas. Sick.
I also went a lot part of my life insisting I liked no vegetables but fortunately, in my late teens I gave them another try and now I love a lot of them. However, I am a texture person too and there are certain things I cannot eat ever, for any reason, and believe me I’ve tried:
1. refried beans (I know that probably doesn’t really count as a “healthy vegetable”)
2. red, black, wax, or lima peans
3. regular peas
4. chick peas
5. almost any vegetable cooked to “softness” (examples: carrots, zucchini). Steamed and crisp? Yes. Tossed in a stir-fry? Delicious. Soft and soggy? NO THANK YOU.
I had a dismaying mix of parents: one, a 100 lb home-ec teacher, and two, a 250 lb butter-from-a-spoon eater. Guess which one I’m mostly like. Anyhoo, my 12 yr old son can’t do mashed potatoes. Who doesn’t love mashed potatoes? It’s a texture thing with him, and I totally don’t get it. I also don’t get that my husband won’t do peas. Really? Peas are so benign. They’re like not even there. Y’all are weird. Beets are totally from hell, though!
“satan veggies” HA!
My parents subscribed to a similar school of veggie-eating torture. ONLY frozen vegetables, all the time, and we HAD to eat them all. My least favorite was that medley with the peas and the carrots and the corn all mixed in and ICK. And now I am a grown-up and can eat fresh vegetables, cause I said so! Yay!!!! (And fresh vegetables are not “too expensive,” Mom and Dad, so there!)
Traumatic Vegetable Experience and Pea H8R 4LIFE = brilliant!
Funny thing, I’ve never cared for peas as a vegetable side dish, but split pea soup = yum! Yes, weird. However, split pea soup doesn’t agree with me, so I can’t enjoy it anymore. Oh, and I’ll eat peas in chinese food fried rice, but they’re with all the other goodies, so I can’t really taste them.
Hubby had green beans out of a can all the time growing up and will now only eat fresh green beans that are still crisp-tender when cooked. In fact, all veggies have to be crisp-tender for us to eat them, for the most part. No more cooking them to death.
Creamed peas with pearl onions – of course, I barfed! I warned my dad and he insisted on shoveling them in my mouth. I hated dinnertime battles.
Forcing kids to eat…or freakin’ chew in your case…is a power trip for parents and my mom and dad were clearly generals in that army. I don’t force my kids to eat vegetables as it’s just not the hill I wish to die on.
It just ain’t no big thang if my kids don’t eat vegetables. They will come to it in their own time and then bitch/moan/complain that I never fed them peas/corn/broccoli when they were growing up.
I have to tell you, I love peas. I will shout it from the rooftop…
I LOVE PEAS!!!!!!!
It’s OK, I understand if you do not want to be friends anymore. HAHAHAAA 🙂
I *hate* peas. Loathe and detest them. And peas are my son’s favorite vegetable. In the interests of getting him to eat green things, we have peas at almost every meal.
My mother thinks it’s hysterical. She’s German too. Maybe that’s not a coincidence.
*sob*
Peas are the devil. Except I do like them shelled right off the vine. Canned vegetables are just wrong. Canned corn is squishy and rubbery at the same time, how does that even work? Fresh vegetables are the best. I hated them as a kid but I’m loving them now and forcing my husband to come along for the ride 😀
OMG, i thought I was the only one who swallowed my peas like pills!!!! Awesome. I still hate them too. Solidarity, fellow Pea h8r.
My mom served veggies at every dinner, and I grew up mostly liking them. And as an adult, I’ve discovered all kinds of wonderful vegetables that I never had as a kid, because my parents don’t like them, so they never served them. (For example, my mom grew up being forced to eat asparagus from a can, which I admit is vile & disgusting. But fresh roasted asparagus? YUM. And I never knew about it until I was in my 20s!)
I had a similar trauma with corn. Only it was my grandmother’s creamed corn. It makes me gag too. I don’t have a corn allergy, I have a psychological corn AVERSION. It makes my throat close up. Ugh.
Fresh pea salad with mayonnaise and cheese? It’s phenomenal but I suspect I just took you 20 years back…
I too am German, come from very sturdy stock, and a long line of good cooks. We always had a garden with fresh fruits and veggies growing up. I’ve always been a veggie lover but canned veggies, with the exception of tomatoes, are just nasty and in my opinion even frozen peas are gross. Fresh peas are not quite so bad but still not my favorite. We always had stir fry with peas in the pod which I wasn’t fond of either, as an adult I tolerate them but don’t seek them out.
I love that you’re willing to share your life with us and I wish I liked to write because then I could let you into mine. No matter what you decide to share I’ll read it and keep coming back for more because I like what you have to say.
My mom really tried hard to give us veggies with every meal, and I thought they were *okay* – but she gave us the canned ones. Now I’ll only eat fresh or frozen, and they are yummy-delish.
That’s right, I said “yummy-delish.”
Wow pea hating memories just flooded back to me! I distinctly remember a babysitter forcing me to eat all of my peas even though I told her I didn’t want to. She even put a timer on me and said she would tell my parents I was bad if I didn’t eat them! I ended up throwing up all over the place. To this day, I hate peas and refuse to eat them.
OMG, coming out of lurkdom to say that I had lots of fresh veges growing up and I like them, almost all of them. EXCEPT Lima Beans they are SATAN vegetables. Texture is horrible. I remember having to sit at the dinner table for hours until i ate them all.
I hate oranges and porridge for the same reason. Being forced to eat them growing up means that my children think oranges are exotic, and that porridge is a treat.
We were corn and green beans! LOL
Which I love… but as an adult I’ve grown to like some other veggies. I could eat broccoli (cooked) all day! Raw veggies (except salad) are nasty.
I did not know I liked peas until I was fifteen or so and tried some at a friend’s house to be polite (my Mom hated them so never ever served them). I grew up on a steady diet of canned veggies (corn, carrots, green beans, beets) and didn’t mind them. I’m only now starting to branch out in my search for new veggies to like (though I will not ever like broccoli and the one time I ate eggplant it tasted the way my grandmother’s bathroom used to smell, so no more of that for me).
Your aversion to peas and corn reminds me of my aversion to tuna fish. Even looking at the cans in the store makes my stomach churn.
Also, yay for the “just because I like to write!” posts. Those are the most fun to create!
The only vegetables we had growing up were corn and potatoes. At least the peas were a little bit healthier!
“PEA H8R 4LIFE”
If you make this a bumper sticker, I will totally buy it.
That is all.
peace…
I too swallowed peas like pills- just confessed that to my parents a week or so ago.
Fellow pea h8r 4life.
My little niece loves peas but hates every other veggie. Ironic part is everyone else hates peas. Lol
She ends up having almost an entire can of peas every weekend when she visits Grandma because she is the only one that will eat them. 🙂
my parents never really paid much attention to nutrition growing up either (of course they also couldn’t cook and so everything came out of a can or freezer.) my mom tells me all the time nowadays that Ive gotten fat and ugly. Wish she would have said that years ago when I was gaining it, seems like it would have done more good then when I only needed to lose 5 lbs versus 50.
Y Love your blogs! Love Corn and Peas, still do!
It was the spinach, mushrooms and onions that left me sitting at the table till all hours of the night as a kid, you know YOU ARE NOT LEAVING THE TABLE TILL YOU FINISH YOUR VEGGIES!!
One bite of spinach and gagging till I vomit- OMG! The worst!! Today I can eat the spinach love fresh way more than cooked/canned. Like Red Onions.
The mushrooms I must be allergic to though, can’t even think of them without gagging much less having them touch my food. Uggh they are a FUNGUS!
When we go out to eat my husband always emphasizes that I am allergic- make sure the chef knows that she can NOT have mushrooms on her plate.
As an adult we have always included fresh veggies- husband loves them steamed so does our daughter the only thing she doesn’t like is the mushrooms.
I HATE peas! I’ve always hated peas. My parents forced me to eat the disgusting little spawns of Satan too. *shudders*
My mom LOVED Brussels sprouts, which I think are the tool of the devil. I once had a power struggle with my dad over eating the nasty things. He took me back in the back room and we sat on the floor until I ate them. Weird, really, because I wasn’t a picky eater, I just HATED BRUSSELS SPROUTS! He chose that mountain to fight on, though. I don’t remember how long we sat back there. I must have blocked it out.
I asked him about it, years later, and he said, “You know, hon, there are just some things you choose to fight as a parent, and, often, you look back years later and think, ‘Why did I choose that battle with my kid?’ ”
I will “make” my kids try things, because tastes can change over the years, but if they genuinely don’t like it, they don’t HAVE to eat it. (Plus, I always tell them that they wouldn’t know that they LOVE artichokes if they hadn’t tried them!)
I’m the EXACT same way with Beets. Ugh. Gross. Blood clots on a plate, and I will never, ever EVER serve them.
The End.
peas suck. my hubby and son like them, us girls hate them….it was forced to be eaten when i was a kid and cant stand them as a adult. I also feel the same was with cooked carrots.the mushiness gag…no way in hell. My son and hubby eat lots of veggies,sadly the girls and I dont. its green beans corn potates and lettuce for us basically.. 🙁
I have loved some vegetables (spinach!) since I was a baby, and my mom told me I would rather eat baby food spinach than the dessert (what kind of sick child was I?!?!?). There are still some I like, but others, like cooked carrots, I hate. And like you, it is mostly because of the texture.
Have you ever tried grilling your veggies?
The best! Corn (on the cob), zuccini, squash, peppers, onions, asparagus, you name it!
Just drizzle a little olive oil on them salt & pepper and throw ’em on the grill.
OMG! Peas! H.A.T.E. them!! Little green death balls is what they are!!
Even worse…my oldest (now 21) LOVED peas. I would try to be the “Good Mommy feeding the kid healthy stuff”. I would be gagging my ass off trying to feed them to him. Yep…lovely example mom was. LOL!
Totally did the peas-as-a-pill trick too! That’s how I learned to take pills so young as a kid and made it easier when I got sick and needed antibiotics or something.
My mom never forced the peas on me, but my grandma did, and we spent time at her house while my mom worked. She’d also force liver on me, but that’s another therapy session altogether.
Fortunately she didn’t care how I ate them, as long as they were digested. I’d take a BIG glass of milk, put the peas in my mouth, letting them barely touch my tongue, and then take a giant gulp of the milk.
As an adult I can’t get past the I-hate-peas mantra I’ve carried throughout my life. They taste gross, and they have a weird texture.
I do love vegetables though. And my kids are awesome veggie eaters. And on the rare instance that I make peas, I never force them to eat them.
please keep writing, this post made me chuckle, thanks to your hilarious way of getting your story across. Seriously, I think you’re fantastic!
We love veggies in our house. My mom used to have a garden, and gardening was one of my fondest memories. I remember being excited for the first string beans and then loathing them by the end of the summer.
Thankfully I married a man who is open to me forcing veggies on him.
i totally feel you on this one. I had meatloaf once as a kid, and I puked it all up due to some nasty viral thing. I can’t, for the life of me, eat meatloaf. Now that I’m vegan I won’t, but I used to like to eat meat A LOT, and no matter what I couldn’t force the meatloaf down my gullet. So I’m with you on being a h8r. I’m a h8r 2.
TOTAL pea hater here – Can totally agree with you. BUT – my 7 year old little man LOVES the green peas. LOVES them. we were at a cafeteria style restaurant and he asked for them, and I was like “where have you had them before? Do you even know if you like them before I buy them?” Cause I KNEW I’d never cooked them for him 🙂 Turns out, he’d had them for lunch at the daycare center that he spent maybe 20 days in one summer and loved them…. So now I have peas in my cabinet and as long as he’ll eat them and I don’t have to – we’re good.
I read this post to my 8-year-old daughter for her bedtime story. She laughed so hard, it was tough to get her to sleep. Your words, my animation.
Pea h8r 4life, here, too. After I starting going to the farmers market and loving all sorts of veggies I’d never even heard or previously found gross, I decided to give some farm-fresh peas a whirl. While a definite improvement over canned peas, they were still disgusting. I can do snow peas (the edible pod) and ‘brown peas’ (like black-eyed peas), but English peas take the title of the only veggie I HATE.
I am so relieved – I thought I was the only one who ate peas whole. They still make me gag. By the time I was about 16 my mum said to me “Huh. Guess you really don’t like peas then” and I was allowed to have broccoli or beans instead.