A high fat meal can make my gall bladder hurt, but that's more of a pain in the side than the back.

Mine's been gone since I was 21, so I hope it's not that.

Oooh. I'm watching Food Network, and someone just served sweet potato fries. Now I really want sweet potato fries.

Even my most hated food, cantelope, was sweet and juicy from the garden!

Cantelope (and melons in general), as I understand it, do not continue to ripen after they are picked, they just "break down" and get a little softer so you can eat them. In order to best ship them, however, they are picked a little green so they are less fragile. Grocery store melon is basically un-ripened slightly-decayed fruit. Its worst with cantelope because it has such a thin rind and is shipped greenest.

Vine ripened melon, otoh, is actually ripe. Farmers markets and farm stands aren't dealing with a bunch of shipping and storage and can actually have ripe melons. Soooooo gooood.

The other veggie I've really liked roasted is carrots. The gigantic fat ones are sooooo good. I'm spoiled by Carribbean neighbors and their produce demands -- carrots the width of my wrist have been a revelation.

Good advice, Hil. Now tell me how to develop an actual appreciation for the way vegetables taste?

The roasted with olive oil and some salt veggies that Brenda has hooked me on are very different. They're sort of more "meaty" in the way they are filling.

If you hit a farmers market for some of the veggies you already dislike less and cook them that way you'll certainly get a richer flavor. Of course it's possible you won't LIKE that flavor, but its possible (or even likely) that you will.

ION, I'm ordering pizza and watching Doctor Who. It is REALLY good pizza.

Roasted corn and roasted red potatoes are a huge step up from the way those vegetables normally taste. And grilling seems to bring out the best in onions and all sorts of squash, even without any extra seasoning.

I love Jersey corn cooked on the grill. It's just so much better than boiled corn on the cob, and light years beyond canned or frozen.

I've also always been more than a little unadventurous with the grocery-store veg, but I third the idea that the good stuff is a completely different non-animal. Growing my own makes a huge difference for me: I started gardening because I wanted to play in the dirt and had happy childhood memories of my mom's and grandma's gardens and refused to pay $2 over and over for the little plastic packets of herbs and knew that the few veggies I really enthusiastically loved were way better when they were freshly grown; once I fell in love with growing things, I started wanting to try more and more different species and weird varieties, and having a relationship with a vegetable makes me 1000 times more likely to want to try cool ways of making and eating it.

(I'm also one of those weirdos who turned into a foodie and cook as a more-or-less direct result of being an insanely picky eater, and the gardening thing is closely related. If I make it, I know exactly what's in it and can totally finesse my way around my remaining weird taste and texture issues without having to explain yet again that no, I don't like food-that-EVERYONE-likes, and yes I really have tried it, and yes, I mean I've tried it several times, and...)

Thanks, Brenda, I appreciate it.

My pizza was disappointing. The pesto was half salt, blech. Here is where I scrape everything off the crust, pick out and eat the veg, and nom the crispy bits of crust. I wonder if they'd consider making a chicken pesto pizza subbing garlic olive oil for the pesto? I went for pesto because I can't do the tomato based sauces.

::sits on amych's bench. her garden bench. eats raw homegrown veggies::

Freshly picked sweet corn is a miracle of yum. It's a delicate creature and a different animal than if you wait a week and/or put it in the fridge.

One of my favorite ways to grill it is with some basil stuffed under the leaves.