I think most of us remember dinner table instructions like “Eat your vegetables,” or “Eat your vegetables or you won’t get dessert.”

I was raised in an era when moms were overjoyed by the convenience of canned veggies and frozen veggies. My own mother was partial to Birds-Eye brand blends of uniformly cut zucchini, broccoli and cauliflower. And who could forget servings of proportionately sized frozen peas and carrot bits left on plates after mains and mashed potatoes had been devoured? Since carrots were always served with peas, I think it wasn’t until well into my teenage years that I realized they didn’t come from the same pod or even the same plant.

My mother was big on V-8 Juice because it supposedly gave you the nutrition that could be found in 8 different vegetables without actually having to consume eight different vegetables (all in one color, too).

I am not sure when I saw the light. I am not vegan or anything. I love a rare hamburger off the grill, but my approach to veggie consumption is opposite the less is more approach. Except for Brussels sprouts (which I just don’t like), more is MORE.

During winter months, I will make a Turkish lamb stew, transforming some inexpensive shoulder meat by letting cubed pieces sweat for hours in a crock pot with green beans, eggplant, and onion. (Don’t forget the bay leaf.) I’ll linger in the produce section at my local store for eternities wavering between choices in greens: mustard, Swiss chard, spinach, and rapini. Don’t even get me started about beets. I can spend hours online pouring over Food Network recipes for that fantastic root.

When I make a salad, I like to throw in red peppers and green onions, purple cabbage shreds, green broccoli flowers and celery, cool white cucumber slices, orange chunks of carrots (now that I know they aren’t naturally the size of peas), maybe some yellow squash, and of course, tomato.  Let’s see. There’s cherry, grape, plum, heritage, black, golden, green, and more.

A few weeks ago, my upstairs neighbor who sings in a band invited John and me to a performance taking place among the small urban garden plots at the Peterson Garden Project just a few blocks from where we live. The New Switcheroo played on a small stage amid an August growth of corn and squash and lettuce. It was a perfect setting for their rendition of Guy Clark’s classic.

Homegrown tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes —
What’d life be without homegrown tomatoes?
Only two things that money can’t buy;
That’s true love & homegrown tomatoes.

The evening of music amid the well-tended garden plots was a special delight. I kept thinking about eating wonderfully colored food from my plate.

Too often, we’re told that things that are good for us are difficult to take; that if we want to benefit from something, we just have to suck it up and tolerate some unpleasantness.

But I can’t say this about eating veggies.

Sometimes, I just want to thank God that something so good for me is so colorful and fun.

Discovering that our parents were right, although not exactly in the way they might have expected, is no small thing. (They’re colorful and fun. Eat your vegetables!)