Feature Columns
Greens you can‘t putt on
By Dan St. Yves
Wednesday, September 3, 2008

I have yet to come to terms with why things that are supposed to be so good for you always seem to essentially taste like hemlock, or lawn. I know I should eat more vegetables, but the only greens I tend to care about at this time of year are the ones you can putt on.
I know, there are loads of leafy greens that should be added to your everyday diet. Take cabbage, for example. Now there‘s a leafy vegetable with all sorts of apparent health benefits. As a matter of fact, several years ago there was a dubious boiled cabbage diet.
I‘d suggest that the demise of that diet may have been that anyone following a daily boiled cabbage regimen would eventually awake one day out of the blue, and set about making cabbage rolls stuffed with ground hamburger and mashed potatoes. And then they‘d toss the cabbage leaves out the window, and enjoy a real meal. I never tried the cabbage diet – I suppose I just couldn‘t interest my “inner goat.”
Lettuce comes in a variety of strains, which best describes my attempts at eating more of it. You‘ve got your leaf, your iceberg, your romaine and your indoor/outdoor carpet varieties. I don‘t really favour one over the other, as long as it‘s wearing a lifejacket, while submerged in enough dressing to be considered soup.
I understand that too much dressing somewhat cancels out the health benefits of a serving of lettuce, but until a leaf of lettuce tastes like a fresh peanut butter crepe, me and a large dollop of Newman‘s Own are never going to be very far apart.
The Canada Food Guide was updated last year, and the new recommendation for a meal-time serving is to imagine dividing your plate into two halves, and then divide one of the remaining halves in half again. The full half of the plate should be . . . vegetables! Not pasta, not even whole grain breads, but vegetables.
For the record, I was unable to confirm anywhere in the guide that potato chips would be considered vegetables. The Canada Food Guide is trying to kill me. While not a leafy green, celery is another vegetable that would pass muster in the food guide, but interests me only if Cheese Whiz has filled the indent.
I am beginning to see a pattern emerging, and I‘m afraid it doesn‘t bode well for my long-term health – I only enjoy vegetables with more garnish than vegetable. And yet, I can always fit in more Fruit Loops on any given morning. Go figure.
What else? Cucumber – a pickle run amok. Serve it up with a cold pastrami sandwich, and count me in!
What the world really needs is a diet pretzel, or potato chips made from baked cabbage leaves that don’’t retain any of that product‘s downsides, like the taste, texture or overall blah-ness.
Blah-ness is really at the artichoke heart of what prevents me from embracing diets. My life needs pizzazz, and a boiled cabbage leaf is seriously lacking in pizzazz!
And speaking of pizzazz, I think it‘s officially time to wrap this up, and order my self a pizza. I suppose it wouldn‘t hurt to have them throw some sort of vegetable on there.
Are mushrooms vegetation, or vegetable?
- Dan St. Yves is a humour columnist. His column appears each Wednesday in eVent! Check out Dan’’s website at www.nonsenseandstuff.com or contact him at ThatDanGuy@shaw.ca.