At my house, we like to buy entire vegetable trays, the ones typically reserved for all sorts of get-togethers. But these are just for the two of us. I don’t know and I don’t care if it’s not a cost-effective way to get vegetables (I’m almost positive it’s not), but busting out a fresh veggie tray before returning to an endless X-Files marathon significantly increases the fun factor.
Except when we have to look at the sad-ass cauliflower, a useless, depressing vegetable that sometimes, beyond all reason, occupies a quarter of the whole freaking tray.
The cauliflower lobby is really earning its money these days, because I’ve never seen anyone make a mad dash for them when a veggie platter gets opened at a party. No one ever says, “All right, cauliflower! Get the hell out of my way!” No, we all just pass over it and deem the tray to be fit for the garbage when the cauliflower is the only thing that’s left.
It isn’t just about cauliflower’s bland taste. The real problem is that its constant inclusion in the veggie tray is pure redundancy. Inferior to broccoli in every way, cauliflower is the unwanted stepson of the miniature tree-like vegetable family, and we shouldn’t have to be putting them in veggie trays out of pity. After all, isn’t it much worse to watch the cauliflower get picked over again and again for the celery, carrots, grape tomatoes or – God willing, someone magnificent was put in charge of the veggie tray and went all out for it – the cucumbers rather than just pretend it never existed at all? Out of sight, out of mind works wonders, you know.
As I plowed through the rest of the worthy vegetables in our recent X-Files platter, making fun of the standalone episodes where Mulder and Scully take random time off from that huge government conspiracy to solve a crime in some podunk little town, I couldn’t stand having to reach over the homely cauliflower every time I wanted to grab some succulent, sexy celery. Each time I reached out my hand, the anticipation building for the cauliflower in hopes that it would finally be chosen, I would simply bypass it for the objectively better vegetables. It was a sick, desperate display and I don’t need that kind of awkward interaction with my vegetables, so I even tried the cauliflower once, if only to bestow upon it an opportunity to maintain its dignity.
I felt nothing.
The fact of the matter is, in most store-bought trays, there are only four or five vegetable slots and an absurdly disproportionate amount of ranch dressing in the middle. So while we bathe the better vegetables in that ranch ambrosia, cauliflower is left to be eaten dry, an agonizing exercise I assure you.
Now, could I just make my own vegetable platters and use any types of vegetables that I want? Of course. Am I ever going to do that? Absolutely not. This is a matter of principle. Cauliflower is an abomination and quite possibly one of God’s greatest mistakes, and we shouldn’t have to suffer for it. Let’s end the madness now.
