I should begin by saying, I love vegetables. Green ones, orange ones, leafy ones, stalky ones, root ones…you get the picture. At an Italian restaurant, Contorni is the first heading my eyes eagerly skip to, and I have been known more than once to assemble a meal for myself of one or two delicious veggie sides, along with a dish starring my best friend/arch nemesis, the potato.

Why do I love vegetables? Who can explain why our tastebuds send the messages to our brains that they do? Perhaps it all started in those formative tastebud years, when my Grandma, the world’s greatest cook, (sorry, Lidia…you know I still love you) would prepare an abundance of veggies for me dressed perfectly with garlic and olive oil. Maybe my mother filled her plate with them while she was carrying me. Maybe it’s psychological – the knowledge of filling my body with all those beautiful little phytonutrients and anti-carcinogens (that Dr. Weill tells us we can’t get enough of) making the food that much more delicious. Although, if deliciousness were a gauge of health, Ben & Jerry’s Oatmeal Cookie Chunk would probably cure cancer.

To be clear, I’m no vegetarian. I tried it to be trendy for about 6 months in high school, but caved in to a 2am snack attack of Denny’s Chili Nachos one winter night while my first gay friend, Lionel, made the appropriate ooohing and gasping sounds to properly acknowledge the drama of my relapse into carnivoredom. To sum up myself as an eater, I’d have to say I am 30% Park Sloper (health-nut), 20% American (rare, please), 10% foodie, 20% Italian-American (everything tastes better with garlic), 15% New Englander (clambake!), and 5% Irish (that’s the part that drinks the beer…if you care to challenge that percentage, you’d best have photos to back up your claim). All in all, I am a person who loves to eat and drink, and since one can only log so many minutes on the elliptical machine, I always managed to balance my love of food and quest for good health by satiating myself with large servings of my beloved veggies. I carried on this way quite nicely for some time, until something very unexpected happened…I fell in love with a man who hates vegetables.

And thus we begin our journey. Whether you are reading this blog from it’s inception, or joining us at a later date, my intent is to share with you the trials, tribulations, and general wackiness that ensue while trying to trick my husband into eating vegetables. Thrown in, for good measure, will be some humorous background stories from our dating days, as well as some stories I have heard from before my dear husband ever met me. And, less anyone doubt that this is, indeed, a FOOD blog, I will take you through the menus and recipes I prepare along the way.