I have this large eggplant in my refrigerator and am not sure if I want to eat it. See, I have always hated eggplant - despised it, actually. It was one of those vegetable my father grew in the garden for god-only-knows what reason, considering no one in the house liked them much, and on occasion he would cut one up and deep-fry it like his mother used to and which only he would eat, trying to convince us (and maybe himself) how good it tasted. Images of greasy sticks o' nastiness are seared in my memory. Not surprisingly, eggplants were high on the list of garden giveaways and I believe Dad silently rejoiced when my sister began dating (and eventually married) a vegetarian; whether my brother-in-law rejoiced over twenty pounds of eggplant every summer is another matter. And it wasn't just that I couldn't stand to eat aubergines - I couldn't even watch people eat them. I was out to dinner with a vegetarian friend and he ordered some dish that came out stacked between two grotesquely large slabs of grilled eggplant, which he loves and subsequently attacked with his fork; I silently gagged. To be clear: eggplants = epitome of gross.
