In the Hated Vegetable series, I’ll focus on preparing meals that contain foods I hate.  Or, foods I think I hate.

Tonight I ate more presumably gross food.  Plated sent me Salsify, Pea, and Sweet Onion Gruyere Paninis with Frisee Salad.  Did you read that?  Peas.  On a sandwich.  WTF? Wouldn’t they roll off the sandwich?  Isn’t that weird?

And who ever thought of eating peas, anyway?  Who said “Hey, let’s take these little green things that look like congealed snot and and put them in our mouth.  Bet they’re delicious!”  Who is the freak who first ate peas?

Then Plated tries to make the meal even more gross by adding cooked spinach. Please remember a few weeks ago just the thought of eating spinach forced me spit out a mouth full of food. Spinach wins the title of Second Grossest-Looking Everyday Food EVER, barely beaten out by Kellogg’s Frosted Mini-Wheats that have set in milk so long they unravel.  (I swear my sisters would leave theirs in the milk on purpose.)

The meal also included a tree-branch-looking thing called a “salsify.”  It sounds like salsa, but is no relation.  I’m disappointed, but chop it up per the recipe instructions.

On the plus side the meal did involve bread, cheese and caramelized onion.  On the strength of these three ingredients I decided I could choke down the panini, so put my fingers in my ears, ignored the Pizza Hut commercials playing incessantly on TV and cooked.  (It’s very hard to cook with fingers in your ears, and probably unsanitary, but I managed.)

Did you know salsify is sticky?  Maybe it’s salsify sap? I had to use Goo Gone to get it off my hands.  Once again Plated leaves out information I would have liked to have known in advance, so I could avoid digging through a cabinet with sticky hands, stick-ifying everything I touched.

Plated didn’t send enough cheese.  No way I could get through this experience without LOTS of cheese to disguise the vegetables.  I used half the cheese belonging to the uncooked serving, but hey — it’s not like I’d be cooking this hot mess again, right?

Except finished sandwich unexpectedly looked . . . delicious.  The peas weren’t rolling sickly around the plate, and the spinach wasn’t all gross and protruding out from under the bread.  On the contrary, it toasted beautifully and smelt really amazing. But hey, smell is overrated.  I’m not going to be fooled by a little aroma.  This sandwich had too many gross-me-out-things on it to ever be a success.

I ate the first bite standing by the trash can. My phone was on the counter beside me, with the Pizza Hut app at the ready.  I closed my eyes, brought the sandwich up to my face, screwed up my nose and took a bite.  I know the green grossness would hit at any second.  I was ready for the veggie slime to spoil the meal.  I chewed.  And chewed.  And swallowed in amazement.

Plated triumphs again.  Another weird-assed meal with gross vegetables, and I enjoyed every bite.  I’m still in shock.  Tomorrow morning I’m buying more cheese so I can cook the other sandwich for lunch.

But in the long term?  It’s good.  I enjoyed it.  But this isn’t going into my recipe collection, mainly because it uses bread.  Since I’m single I rarely buy bread.  The loaf always goes bad before I can finish it, even the so-called small loaves.  Molded bread makes me feel lonely, so I won’t be cooking this again.  Thank you, Plated, but ultimately no thanks.