The Centners vs. Edamame

This past week we headed out for dinner at Pei Wei.  I was in charge of ordering the food and at the last minute decided to add an order of edamame.  My mom had been telling me for weeks about how amazing it was.  I’ve learned some things over the years, one being that my mom really does know what she’s talking about sometimes, so I decided to give it a try. 

We sat down and I anxiously waited for our healthy appetizer to arrive.  After forever (ok, like 5 minutes), it arrived.  Mr. C and I looked at it and logically discussed and decided that of course it was meant to be eaten shell and all (like a snow pea).  Mr. C and I are pretty in sync sometimes; kinda like two peas in a pod!  Anyhow, this was one of those times.  We both looked at each other at the same time, with the same disgusted look on our faces, and exclaimed, “nope, not meant to be eaten with the shell.”  Since we were in public we thought we should refrain from spitting it out since we wanted to appear like civilized human beings.  The shell was stringy but we both got it down.  Now that we knew the shell was NOT meant to be eaten, I figured we could peacefully continue our dinner.  Mr. C told me to put the whole pod in my mouth and slide the peas out.  Sounded easy enough.  Except for the fact that anything involving coordination really isn’t my cup of tea.  The first one I picked up had three beans.  I slid the first two out but somehow managed to squeeze the end of the pod in such a way that the third went flying.  I looked around and hoped that no one noticed.  I tried again.  This time I was concentrating so much on not letting it fly out the end that it fell out of my mouth.  Oops.  I had a couple more without incident before I had two more that flew out of the end.  It was then that I realized the following:

1.     Food such as this should really come with directions.  The FDA needs to get on that.

2.     The edamame wasn’t really that great.

3.     Because of realization #1, the eating process was definitely not worth it.

4.     I need to work on my coordination skills so I don’t look like a cavewoman.

5.     The woman who kept looking our direction and laughing was in fact laughing AT us, not at her husband’s jokes.

6.     Although I titled this post “The Centners vs. Edamame,” I’m really the only one who lost the fight. 

I’ve since learned from a friend that apparently edamame has a sort of easy open method.  A person should be able to easily split the pod, therefore avoiding a wonderful debacle such as mine.  Oh, and just FYI, when I googled “how to eat edamame”, I only got to  “how to eat ed” before  “how to eat edamame” was suggested.  Therefore, I am not the only person in the world who needs an instruction manual for the stuff!

I do worry that after reading this post my mother-in-law may begin to fear that her son didn’t pick the brightest crayon in the box.  Don’t worry; I think your son was thinking that same thought the other night at Pei Wei!