Suzanne Graham

We have tried a new food, and our reaction had interesting BTD implications.

While I was at my parent’s house, my Darling Daughter bought groceries and cooked BTD meals for herself and her father. The day before I got home, she cleaned the house from top to bottom, and when I arrived, she had a delicious dinner waiting. See why I call her DD?

She and I talked on the phone every day about lots of things, including food. She was really interested in trying stir fried snow peas. As she was looking for them at the store, she discovered a bag of edamame in the freezer section. Knowing that soy was one of her superbeneficial foods, she bought it.

The instructions on the bag were pretty clear – boil them or microwave them. They look a whole lot like snow peas. So yesterday she and I cooked edamame with carrots and celery. DD took some in her lunch to work, and I took some in my lunch to school. I took one bite and spit them out. It was like eating hay. The pods were disgusting.

I left a message on her cell phone, apologizing for the inedible lunch. I told her to pick the beans out of the pods and just eat those with the other veggies.

When she got home, she said, “What were you talking about? The edamame was good.” She had eaten it pods and all. She liked it so much, she wanted more today.

I looked at the bag. There was nothing in the directions about eating or not eating the pods. I went on the Internet. Of all the sites I checked, the vast majority say don’t eat the pods. They recommend eating edamame as finger food, squeezing the little green beans out of the pods and throwing the pods away. But there are a few sites that say eating pods is fine, as long as they are cooked. A few people write that they actually like to eat pods and all.

All I can say is that those people have to be Type As! Unless you had some internal sense that you were eating something very beneficial, you wouldn’t eat soybean pods and like them! I’ll give edamame another try, but I’ll be eating it like they do in Japan, with a bowl nearby for discarding the pods.