Taking Sides: City Limits: Veggie styles are seasoned to taste

EDITOR’S NOTE: Taking Sides: City Limits is an occasional column about city/country life.

Clint Cooper: What with trying not to be a statistic in the national epidemic of obesity, combined with almost reaching (gulp) the age of 50, I have finally learned that a crunchy salad is much better tasting than a Big Mac. I haven’t come to this understanding overnight — I’ve had maybe one Big Mac in the last five years — but gradually I have learned to eat better since my childhood. I ate too much fast food growing up. My mother was a good cook, but we weren’t raised with a lot of fresh vegetables and fruit. I figured all green beans came from Stokley and all cranberries were shaped like a can.

Lisa Denton: Well, I grew up eating plenty of fresh vegetables — and still cook them when I have the time — but I still appreciate canned green beans. Allens Italian green beans are my favorite if I’m eating canned. They’re wide and flat and remind me of fresh green beans cooked in a pressure cooker. There’s even a “Seasoned Southern Style” version that I’m sure is bad for me, but I eat them anyway.

And the “shloop” of cranberry sauce leaving the can is not just a Thanksgiving tradition but one of my favorite sounds. Seriously. It’s a Pavlovian response: I hear “shloop,” and I know it’s time for turkey.

Clint: Undoubtedly, though, after living on a farm for part of your childhood, you grew up to love cauliflower, beets and whatever it is that greens are supposed to be. I’ll eat almost every vegetable these days, but cooked cauliflower, any kind of beets and anything that is called greens but resembles limp seaweed — I’ve actually eaten a sheet of seaweed — is off my list. I consider myself advanced, though, because I will eat raw cauliflower and have actually made dishes that include it.

Lisa: Yeah, you know that Sale Creek, where I grew up, is so rural the ZIP code is EIEIO. But having fresh vegetables from my grandparents’ crops was a summertime bonanza. I can still make a meal on a mess of fried okra, corn on the cob and sliced tomato. They never raised cauliflower or broccoli, but I developed a taste for both later, and I like them raw or cooked. I love greens. One of the reasons I like Olive Garden is the beets in their salads. Really, I’ll eat just about anything that doesn’t eat me first.

Clint: Actually, Lisa, I think they’ve stopped putting those beets on their salads at Olive Garden. That’s why I like them. Anyway, pile on the tomato chunks (not slices on a plate, please), fry up the okra and mix in the corn with salsa, soups or slaw (yes, I’ve done that to slaw), and I’ll happily eat my veggies.