Heated up and ate some frozen mixed veggies yesterday. (Had bought - but didn’t use - them for some soup.)
Neither my wife nor I really like mixed veggies. Just seems like an odd mix that doesn’t really go well together.
Which got us thinking, who decided what would constitute mixed veggies? Since I was a kid in the 60s, they have always been peas, corn, green beans, carrots, and lima beans.
Is it just a plot to get rid of all the excess lima beans that no one in their right mind wants to eat?
There is a brand (Birdseye?) that leaves out the lima beans. I always use them when I’m making shepherd’s pie because I figure lima beans are too starchy and don’t go properly with the potatoes.
I like lima beans fine under other circumstances, I suppose it’s possible this isn’t my right mind. How would I know? :eek:
The whole concept behind ‘mixed veggies’ is that by putting them together, you end up with a dish that has all the essential amino acids, and thus is nutritionally complete, and you won’t die for the lack of one of them. That’s how succotash got started (a mix of corn and lima beans).
I don’t know if the modern food marketers are still paying attention to this when they make their modern mixed veggies, but they ought to.
Hot damn! 2 of my favorite posters were the first 2 to respond to a thread of mine. Now if THAT didn’t put a warm start to my Friday, I don’t know what would!
Not frozen, but canned mixed vegetables: Veg-All. Are the WORST tasting things imaginable. Even for canned veg, these are just VILE. I don’t know how it’s possible to utterly ruin the innocuous canned vegetable, but they manage to do it.
OK, so now I gotta know why some brands dropped the much maligned lima? Was it a result of consumer demand? A longstanding lima drought? Maybe an upswelling of anti-Peruvian sentiment? A shoptcoming of the lima lobby?
I don’t think I have EVER eaten a lima bean other than in mixed veggies - or possibly as some unidentified bean-type “filler” in some soup or stew. I’ve had corn, peas, beans, and carrots on their own both plain and in various configurations, but I’m not sure I ever had a nice old plate of limas.
Even in bean-type dishes, such as chili or bean soups, the bean of choice more often seems to tend towards navy, kidney, or any direction other than lima.
I find they tend to be mealy. I do vaguely remember liking broad beans when my paternal grandmother made them. They probably involved bacon grease and corn bread.