Well, parsnips are ok, but I really would miss celery.
Can’t we put mushrooms and bell peppers on the list, or zucchini, or eggplant, or okra? All of those are nasty [well actually I am allergic to mushrooms but as a cooking ingredient they are ok other than the allergy aspect but the rest are just nasty]
I buy a lot of celery, but almost never use it. It’s the number one thing that I throw out on a regular basis. It’s also the ingredient most liekly to be forgotten when I make stuffing, and I never really miss it until I open the drawer a week later and it’s all still there.
Plus the smell thing. Carrots and celery both smell good, but carrots have actual nutritional value so I’d keep those.
Losing potatoes would be disastrous for humanity. Onions and garlic are used in so many dishes and food cultures that I can’t imagine living without them. That leaves carrots and celery, and celery is a bit less versatile than carrots so I went with that.
If forced to choose, it would be celery. I don’t like it cooked or raw. I do use it sometimes for flavor in soups and stuff, but always pick the stalk out before serving.
These aliens are just mean. Onions and garlic are too important. I love carrot cake and my dogs go batshit insane over baby carrots. This means I’m choosing between potatoes and celery. I’m diabetic and potatoes are pretty much just empty carbs, so… bye bye, potatoes. This hurts me much less than it hurts you.
But if the air always smelled like frying potatoes, we would all be hungry all the time! I’ve tried making home fries from radishes or from cauliflower (low-carb diet), and they are not the same!
Celery, of course. It’s nothing special. I don’t avoid it, and every now and then I’ll have raw celery with peanut butter, but it takes me a really long time to chew it down. I also question whether it even has a scent, so that clearly makes it the right choice to be banished.
I could live without potatoes pretty easily. They are bland, carb-loaded and not a bog part of my diet. I often choose some other side over fries with my burgers. I rarely eat potato chips (I prefer corn-based salty snacks). I like mashed potatoes sometimes, but it wouldn’t kill me to lose them. So yeah, potatoes.
My only qualm is that I like sweet potatoes. But hey, yams! So that food type is sort of covered.
(Hmm. I would miss potato salad. I do love that stuff.)
The other foods listed are too tasty to give up. The cornbread dressing my family makes just wouldn’t be the same without a little celery, for example.
I’d have to get rid of carrots, I can get the nutrition from other sources, but everything is too central to my diet. Celery makes so many cooked items more savory that I’d have to keep it. For instance, when I make a stuffed squash (like acorn or butternut) and use a meat based stuffing, I add celery to it because it really amps up the flavor.
As a child, I always hated cooked carrots, and coated them with ketchup in order to “clean my plate”. Nows my chance to end the tyranny!