Hominem unius libri timeo '

My sleep was better last night, and I was able to relax more, so the pain in my back is improved. Joy and rejoicing! I again slept a lot today, which I am sure is not what my assorted medics would prefer, but my body said that's what it needed, so there we are!

The tiny dictator wanted to communicate that he is not happy with the neglect that he’s been getting.  Imagine that he had to watch me eat Nutella on toast and he got precisely none?  He thinks that is beyond unacceptable and I should get a severe talking to for daring to eat something that can’t be shared with tiny monsters!  (Please note that he was HAND FED pieces of a half a hot dog and got treats. Plus he had over an hour of petting and snuggling. And I still got that look!)

I've been gradually going through my freezer and eating my way through cooked and frozen items. I had some minced chicken that was intended for pasteles, and I used that to make chicken arepas (empanadas) last night. They will do for meals for a few days, happily. And I had made some pelau a week or so back, so I'll take it out later this week. I am again craving curry, so I'll have to plan a day for that.

I am going to need your help and input, please.  When I was in hospital, during the first week or so (in the Quonset hut temporary ward area) Gavin and I started talking about food. We’re both food lovers (I utterly hate the word “foodie” since it conjures up images of smug, pretentious poseurs who are more interested in style over substance, and I could go on at great lengths, so I’ll stop here) and it turned out that while he was growing up meals often didn’t include a lot of vegetables, and when they did, they were heavily overcooked. My experience was that vegetables were either mixed in with the meat or were very much a side dish- we could serve 8 dishes but at least one had to be meat.  Many vegetables were grown in the garden.  We also touched on the vast difference in seasoning and spice levels… turns out that there’s a lot of truth to the old joke that for a Canadian, spices were salt, ketchup and a slight hint of ground black pepper; while for me, a blend of 15 herbs and spices was a starting point for an egg salad.

As we talked, we started to wonder how much of people’s attitudes towards vegetables was linked to their cultures.  Those who were heavily British seemed (based on hearsay, anyway) to avoid most raw or lightly cooked vegetables, with a small exception made for (iceberg) lettuce and “junket” - lettuce with a slice of tomato and perhaps cucumber. We wondered also if there was a fear of vegetables that was culturally linked. My older cookbooks (Trinidadian and British, mainly) featured them as side dishes only.  Remember, though, that recipe books tend to focus on special menus and not much on everyday meals, as those would be passed on through in person learning. 

Anyway, I volunteered to draft a semi-research paper on people's attitudes to food, specifically vegetables. Anecdotally, it seems that traditional north American and Western European cultures avoid vegetables in their diet, with limited exceptions. By that I mean things like potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes, corn, lettuce and cucumbers. Traditional meals are described as "meat and 2 veg" which are usually potatoes and peas & carrots boiled just short of mush. The rest of the meal is built around this model. Recipes for other vegetables have them boiled or drenched in creamy or cheesy sauces. Many of those lookunappetizing, to say the least!

Some of the questions we're trying to answer include:

• Are vegetables regarded as inferior food types?
• Are vegetables considered as options for mains as vegetables, not as fake meat? For instance, instead of tofurkey, or fake chicken. or tofu-steak is it acceptable to make/serve lentil loaf or duchesse potatoes?
• Are there stereotypes associated with eating certain vegetables that make them less desirable? I'm thinking of things like garlic and onions, which were sneered at by British and English Colonials
• Is meat served as a status symbol? Are meat dishes selected because they are trendy?
• Can we create and incorporate tasty vegetable dishes into our regular menus?
• Does  adding more vegetables to meals necessarily mean less flavour?

Your thoughts are needed for this, please. It’s not really possible to do this as a remote research question since there aren’t likely to be any papers that identify fear of vegetables as a reality!

My apologies for this being late but I fell asleep early and had a few hours before I finished this!