All I am saying is give peas a chance

Photo: If there’s a shortage of these peas at your Winn-Dixie, it’s likely because they’re all in my pantry.

There are many valid reasons to make fun of me.

I dress like a beach bum every chance I get. I’m about as handsome as a ferret with mange (assuming ferrets can get mange, of course — I haven’t had time to fact-check that one). I also sing like a mangy ferret being run over by a garbage truck. When I get lab results back from my doctor, they usually put a handwritten note at the bottom like: “Is this a live patient or autopsy report?” 

I can take all that in stride, especially while I’m comfortably wearing flip-flops and swinging in my hammock for exercise as I sing aloud songs like “Oh, Lord It’s Hard To Be Humble” with no sense of irony whatsoever.

“KNOCK IT OFF, WEIRDO!”

See, even my neighbors take it in stride.

However, there’s one area in which I’ve been made fun of my whole life that is tiresome: I’m a picky eater. I have the palate of a 6-year-old boy. (I think his name is Rufus in case he needs his palate back.) I’m the one who has to deal with it. I’m the one who finds himself in third-world villages of Central America for a week with not a single bologna-and-mustard sandwich in sight. I’m the one who orders some delicious chicken dish at a restaurant only to have it arrive with nasty onions and peppers smothered all over it. I’m the one who has to have ridiculous discussions with servers at restaurants like this:

“I’ll take the steak, but instead of the fire-roasted pickled beets, I’ll just have a baked potato as a side.”

“Sorry, but we can’t allow substitutions.”

“Sold separately, the beets are $4.95 and the baked potato is $4.95, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then what’s the problem? I’ll even pay a little extra to keep the damn beets off my plate.”

“Sorry, we can’t do that.”

“Y’all know I’m the customer, right? I pick the food. I pay for the food. I eat the food. End of transaction.”

“Sorry, you can’t substitute the beets.”

“I can’t believe I put on a stupid tie to come into this overpriced snooty restaurant — and my formal flip-flops!”

Though this picky eating thing is my problem, other folks worry about it way more than I do — waiters, family, friends, Romans, countrymen, you name it. They roll their eyes. They go on and on about what I’m missing from the bait shop/sushi counter. They throw zucchini at me. That last one was while I was singing, but still.

Yet, there are some foods I’ll eat that many folks do not like. I once ate meat on a stick that some 12-year-old kid was grilling by a dirt road in a Ghanaian village. Could have been chicken, maybe gorilla or the last American to visit — I dunno. It was good, though.

I’m a meatatarian. Other than liver — especially when served with fava beans by one of Donald Trump’s “late, great” friends — I’ll eat most meats. I love steaks and pork, but I’ve also been known to enjoy venison, gator, squirrel, rabbit and barbecue raccoon. And if chickens ever go extinct, so will I.

There also are a few veggies I like that many others don’t, such as rutabagas, cabbage and brussels sprouts (though the latter is making a comeback as folks have learned to roast them properly with bacon). While I don’t like hardly any raw vegetables — such as that bowl of weeds restaurants like to serve folks before the real food comes — I do eat many cooked vegetables.

My favorite is peas. Specifically green peas. Well, more specifically, the tiny early green peas. Way more specifically, and to the point of all this, “Select Creole Early Tiny Peas by SE Grocers” that I can only find at Winn-Dixie.

I know what you’re thinking: “Who the heck writes about peas and why is my back itching?” But I’m telling you these specific cans of peas are the bomb — or at least tiny fragments of tasty shrapnel from it. And, no, similar versions of these peas at other stores just don’t measure up.

The problem is that I no longer live anywhere close to a Winn-Dixie. So, when I go on a beach trip to somewhere like Saint Simons Island, Georgia, I generally wind up stopping at about three Winn-Dixies, including one on the island.

My wife makes us get a buggy, which is Southern for “shopping cart,” that wheeled thing lazy people just leave in parking spaces instead of returning. Yes, she has tasted the glory of creole tiny peas, and there’s no going back. We will fill the buggy with something like a Diet Coke, a Slim Jim, maybe a loaf of bread, and every can of these little peas from the shelves.

You can imagine the looks we get when we check out with a Diet Coke, Slim Jim, bread and 22 cans of these peas. Even I get a little embarrassed, and I have almost no shame. The clerk will glare at us like we’re up to some sort of creole-style terrorist activity. The folks waiting behind us are wondering what crazy dinner we’re cooking up.

“Dang, them folks sure like peas!”

Then we’ll hit another Winn-Dixie on the way home and get a Diet Coke, maybe some Cheez-Its (those delicious extra toasty ones, of course), and about 27 cans of those peas.

My first part-time job was in a grocery store, so I can only imagine what we’re doing to the poor folks in charge of stocking the shelves.

Manager: Larry, I thought I told you to put that case of peas on the shelf!

Larry: I did! I swear!

Manager: Then why are they missing?! It’s not like somebody came in and bought 27 cans of peas! That’s just stupid! You’re demoted to Cheez-Its!

Larry: The extra toasty ones?

Manager: Duh!

It has become a running joke — kinda — that when our pantry begins running low on these amazing tiny peas we say, “Well, time to go to the beach!”

(As if I ever needed a reason to head for the beach.)

I’d encourage you to give these peas a chance. C’mon! Try ‘em! You’ll like ‘em! How do you know if you haven’t tried them?! You’re so picky! Fine, that just leaves more for me. But I’m telling ya: They are delicious!

If nothing else, they dang sure beat beets.