First of all, I’d like to just go over the rules of Julie v. Veggies again. Maybe some of you are new to this project or maybe some of you are steadfast naysayers and have some unreasonable reason to think I can’t win everything all the time, which I can, so we’re just going to go over this again, slowly.
- First and foremost, I make up the rules and I can do whatever I want.
- Generally, the week should go like this: I eat a vegetable and if I don’t like it, then I keep trying until I come up with something palatable; this is pretty standard since I can’t usually stomach, ugh, new vegetables, ack, right away. However, on the random weeks I win early and can add a new vegetable to my diet Monday or Tuesday, then I have the rest of the week to do whatever I want. I can write about what assholes you naysayers are, heap lavish praise on you supporters for being my favorite people in the whole world, or daydream about having tea and crumpets with the Queen of England. I can also keep on eating that vegetable, because if you’ll recall from three milliseconds ago, I’ve already added it to my diet permanently, but if for some reason I don’t love the next dish I make with it, that doesn’t mean I suddenly lose; it doesn’t negate my earlier win. That’s like saying just because I don’t like onions on my hamburgers I don’t like hamburgers. Complete nonsense.
- Let me just take this opportunity to reiterate that I make up the rules and I can do whatever the fuck I want.
Now that we’re clear, we can revisit collard week for a second. Briefly. IhadregularolecollardsonSundayandtheyweresohorribleIwantedtogougemyeyeballsoutalittlebit. Next up, bok choy.
OK, fine. Since I cleared collard greens with such success on Collard Saturday, I figured, hey, they’re a part of my diet now, why not just give standard greens a little try, what could it hurt? Someone suggested trying the greens at my all-time most favorite eating establishment in the whole wide world forever to infinity, Daddy D’z BBQ Joint, which I took under advisement, and then went to the Midway Pub instead to watch football. I actually didn’t really plan to eat the greens at Midway, I was really only going to eat greens on Sunday if we went to my all-time most favorite eating establishment in the whole wide world forever to infinity, because chances were they would do them right at a barbeque joint, but the glutton for punishment in me took over and before I could stop myself I had ordered them and they were in front of me and I was trying to decide if I should have a pretend fainting spell or just fucking eat them. I was very, very close to pretend fainting.
Melissa assured me the only way those awful things were going down was by dousing them in hot and pepper sauce, while her consummately anti-vegetable husband, Jon, stuck to a “if you have to drown them in sauce, what’s the point, screw em” mantra, which I’ve been saying all along about all the vegetables, thank you very much. Still, I added both hot and pepper sauce with many, many shakes. Lots of sauce. Lots.
Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. Terrible. Horrible. No good. Very bad. Gag.
So Melissa said, “Give em here.” Then she lifted one lonely green out of the heap, held it to the light and inspected it very closely….for bacon. The bacon was its only savior! Now they’re really going to be awful. She ate them. Then her eyes started to water. Too much pepper sauce. “My mouth is on fire.”
Traditional collards, out. Collard gratin, in. I still fucking win.
Julie vs. Vegetables 