Brey Willows

Card 52: Writing Down the Bones: Tell me everything you know about rutabaga and turnips.

Or, rather, about the things that get ignored. The small things.

I was going to write about coffee, but it was coming out far too bourgeois and sentimental. So let’s talk about vegetables.

Brussel sprouts. Mini cabbages that only seem popular at holidays, when people adore or abhor them. Poor little things, rolling around your plate as you decide whether or not to eat them.

What is a rutabaga? I don’t actually know. I’m sure I’ve seen one, somewhere, at some point. I’ll need to look it up. That does suggest it’s an unloved part of our food system. Is there somewhere it’s a delicacy? Is there someone out there who can’t wait to make rutabaga pie or brussel sprout and rutabaga stew?

Do unpopular vegetables wonder what’s going on that makes broccoli so popular? Do they envy mushrooms that get thrown wildly into health smoothies as well as spaghetti sauce? Do things that get pickled (why??) look forward to the swim and metaphysical transition of their being? Because a pickle is truly no longer a cucumber by the time it hits your plate.

When we were in Thailand there was a fruit so noxious smelling that there were signs posted in the hotel threatening heavy fines if you opened one in your room. Who opened a fruit that smells so bad it makes you gag and thought, “I can’t wait to eat this.”