I MADE IT UP: Re-engineering vegetables

By Carl D. Clarke Jr.

There are certain vegetables that I hate.  Asparagus is one of them.  While I have never eaten one raw, it is an especially foul-smelling vegetable when cooked.
Green beans are another vegetable that I hate. They are tart and stringy and acid.  Chefs cover green beans in sauce and slivered almonds to pass them off as edible food, but I am not fooled.  While green beans are easy to grow, easy to pick, and fun to snap while you are gossiping about your neighbors, there is no way you can them or freeze them or cook them that makes them fit for human consumption.
Women say to me, “If you don’t like asparagus (or green beans), you haven’t tasted my asparagus (or green beans).”  Wrong, lady.  You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
Except that I have found a way.  And it’s gonna make me a ton of money. 
Asparagus.  First you cook it into a mush and then leach out all the nasty flavor with water.  Then you bleach out the drab green color with Chlorox Bleach.  The resulting mush retains its vitamins, minerals, fiber and proteins.  Then mix the mush with pepper, salt, sage, and a little hog gristle.  Fry, and you have the makings of a sausage that would go very well on a Hardee’s biscuit.  It’s an almost-veggie biscuit for those who want to cheat a little.
Green beans.  Also called string beans. You have to macerate them in a blender to get rid of the stringy fibers that get caught in your teeth.  Water and Chlorox will leach out the tart flavor.  Then I would add sugar.  My purpose here is to eliminate any vestige of the original green bean, thus freeing millions of Southerners from their cultural obligations.  Again, mix with salt, pepper, sage, and then fry up ready for a Hardee’s biscuit.
If my message is not clear, let me spell it out. A vegetable can have no higher calling than to taste like a Hardee’s sausage biscuit. 

Beets are another vegetable that I don’t like.  When I am done, my borscht biscuits will taste like Hardee’s sausage biscuits as well.
Oysters.  Not a vegetable, but I don’t like them either.  Oysters are so slimy and spongy in your mouth that people have made a whole ritual out of covering them with cocktail sauce and swallowing them whole.  Bleah!  However, if properly pureed and seasoned, an oyster biscuit could be indistinguishable from a Hardee’s sausage biscuit.
I think I am onto something.  The Hardee’s people just called to ask me for an endorsement. 

Carl D. Clarke, Jr. from Abingdon is a weekly columnist for the Washington County News.  He may be reached at