Vegetable Pot Pie and Pineapple

JUNE 7

My mother purchased a vegetable pot pie. My parents encouraged me to eat it by exclaiming how disgusting it looked, theorizing on how gross it would taste, and generally condemning its smell, appearance, ingredients, and texture. I have an incredible support team.

This vegetable pot pie also boasted a special flavoring of tofu cream cheese. Since I don’t eat cream cheese and I sure don’t eat tofu, it was not quite a match made in heaven.

Vegetable Pot Pie Prepares for Battle

After my parents sniffed at the vegetable pot pie with scorn, I put a piece on my plate. I activated the 4-step process:

STEP ONE: Smell it.

STEP TWO: Lift it to your lips.

STEP THREE: If there’s a piece of it that’s clearly just breading, nibble that. Then start fake-choking from how much you don’t want to eat it. If there’s no part that’s clearly just breading, skip to the fake-choking.

STEP FOUR: Excuse yourself from the table.

Scene of the Crime. Graphic. NSFW. 

Once the process was completed, I decided that having failed to actually try a new food, I owed it to myself to find another food to try.

So, perusing the refrigerator, I decided to go for the pineapple. Pineapples are always hanging around my apartment, but I’ve always avoided them. This time, I would make their acquaintance and get to know them intimately.

Good news! Pineapple rocked my world. I love it – juicy, crunchy, awesome! It’s the first new food I’ve tried that I actually really, truly enjoyed – I ate the full portion and would have willingly gone back for more. Or tried pineapple juice. Or sorbet. Or even pineapple pot pie.

Well done.

The happy ending we all deserve. 

All this discussion of pineapple has got me thinking – this is mad important – do people eat pinecones? According to Wikipedia, pinecones are often made into toys called cone cows and, “in Finland there is a fairground with cone cow sculptures large enough for children to ride on.”

The answer, however, is revealed most tellingly in a YouTube video entitled “CJ Eating a Pinecone for 10 Dollars.” Spoiler alert: He vomits halfway through. Double spoiler alert: He still gets the money. Lame. Hygiene alert: His friend got the pine cone off the ground and presumably didn’t wash it well before offering it to CJ for consumption. Saddest part: The video has been on YouTube for three and a half years and has only 772 views. After all that effort.

The question this raises is, What has CJ accomplished since this video? Has he eaten more of the forest? Has he joined a lumberjack office and worked as an assistant tree feller using his groundbreaking tree-eating methodology? I ask these questions because it occurs to me that perhaps what CJ needs for an image boost is to graduate to eating something truly heinous on YouTube and not vomiting: if he would like to attempt to eat the vegetable pot pie with tofu cream, I would be greatly intrigued to watch the ensuing video.