I Am Drowning in Vegetables

THE VEGETABLES ARE trying to kill me. I am drowning in vegetables. I clock out of my home office, and there are the vegetables. I take weekend trips, come home, and there are the vegetables. I can’t sleep, because deep in the corners of my mind, the vegetables are there — slowly rotting, mocking me, blaming me for their inevitable demise.

This is not a horror movie. This is a CSA subscription.

Short for “community-supported agriculture,” CSAs provide subscribers a selection of farm-fresh seasonal produce every week. They are a sustainable and often cost-effective way to eat local and give back to your community. They are also a terrific way to spend hours chopping vegetables and Googling “kohlrabi.”

In the pre-pandemic years, I, a black-and-white-moral-thinking-trying-to-do-right no-matter-the-cost twentysomething, signed up for a CSA every spring. Rarely have I experienced more anxiety, more rage, and more helplessness than when faced with a brand-new “single-sized” (but still enormous) bag of produce while most of the previous week’s veggies remained untouched and rapidly softening. Yet I, ever the Good Consumer, stressed myself silly over produce season after season, because what choice did I have? I couldn’t destroy the planet.

Starting with the COVID lockdown in 2020, I went through a food journey in parallel with a broader mental health journey. I gained several diagnoses and several medication prescriptions. Under the assumption that I would rarely have the energy to cook (let alone cook with fresh produce), I rebuilt my food routine. I learned that “there are no bad foods” also applies to convenience foods and delivery orders, not just foods society deems “unhealthy.” I learned how ableism and food consumption interact. I started drinking a lot more Diet Coke. (Shhh. I just said there are no bad foods. You can’t make fun of me.)

Gradually my life and mind stabilized, and I had more energy than I’d had in a long time — all thanks to DoorDash and many ready-made meals that have, I’m sure, pumped me full of microplastics. I am grateful for the microplastics because they kept me alive; also, you are what you eat.

This brings me back to the CSA. This spring I thought: Why not return to this as a now medicated thirtysomething armed with the power of microplastics? Surely, I can become the Perfect Consumer and not regret it this time? My compost bag of wilted lettuce (God, why is it always lettuce?) laughed in my face.

But luckily for me — and for you, dear readers, who have been waiting patiently for me to get to the point — I did gain some things from this. As I chopped piles of kohlrabi (a real thing, it turns out, related to broccoli), teeth gritted, I repeated to myself: “This will build character. This will help me become more flexible. This will increase my distress tolerance.” My veggie-induced mantra slowly began to bear fruit (bear vegetable?). (If my therapist is reading this, please wipe that smug smile off your face.)

The more I work with the vegetables, the less mental energy I use each time a new bag comes in. If I don’t use the kohlrabi, that’s fine, because perfection isn’t the goal. Perfection is a Sisyphean task that helps only the people on top of the literal and figurative “food chain” of our unjust food systems.

So, next time you are haunted by the specter of vegetables in your fridge, maybe they aren’t mocking you. (Or maybe they’re lovingly mocking you.) They may have something worthwhile to tell you if you’re ready to listen, and chop, and chop some more.