More fruits, but no vegetables

Here's Tantalus, tortured in Hell by fruit withheld: "Boughs, too, drooped low above him, big with fruit, pear trees, pomegranates, brilliant apples, luscious figs, and olives ripe and dark. . ." (Book XI line 704)

Ever hear of a luscious brussels sprout? a brilliant parsnip?

Is it possible the Greeks had no spinach? Is it possible Frank Zappa read the Odyssey and is compensating?

I know potatoes hadn't yet migrated from South America, but this is ridiculous.

I suppose Tantalus might not have been so miserable if it had been vegetables withheld: arugula, green beans, bok choy. Still it would depend on his diet, wouldn't it?

Call Any Vegetable

My brother, in China, just told me about Frank Zappa's song, Call Any Vegetable, from June, 1967.

Call and they'll come to you
Covered with dew
Vegetables dream
Of responding to you
Standing there
Shiny & proud by your side
Holding your hand
While the neighbors decide
Why is a vegetable
Something to hide?
YAR-R-R-R-R-G-H!

Thanks to Stan. The song is not from Lumpy Gravy but from Absolutely Free. You can find the song anywhere on the web--the excerpt comes from

http://lyrics.duble.com/lyrics/F/frank-zappa-lyrics/frank-zappa-call-any-vegetable-lyrics.htm

Did Odysseus Eat His Vegetables?

". . . rows of tables heaped with bread and roast meat, while a steward goes to dip up wine and brim your cups again." (The Odyssey, book IX)

There has been mention of cheese, curds & whey (this is what the Cyclopes likes to eat), grapes, of course, and acres of fruit trees.

But, not a single vegetable. While feasting in the halls of kings, listening to stories, the characters are served by a larder mistress who comes with a tray of roast meats.

But, where are the vegetables? I'm telling you, there is something off kilter here, some prejudice I do not understand. Why do fruits get a mention, but not a single leafy green anti-oxidant producing veg? There are bags of barley meal, jugs of wine, grapes. There is a picnic, when Nausikaa (Book VI) heads to the river to do laundry, but no mention of its contents. Coleslaw? caesar salad? tomatoes and olives? beets? (the color of beets is certainly a classic dark violet, a color often used in the story).

I myself think that vegetables are considered unheroic and therefore not appropriate to an epic. Too bad. If the National Association of Dieticians could quote Homer on vegetables in the diet, just think how persuasive they could be.

Fruits vs Vegetables vs Flowers

In an article in Roots and Sprouts (the Belmont MA farmers' market newsletter) Claire Mackevicius states that "While 'fruit' is a 'botanical term,' 'vegetable' is a 'culinary term' that refers to many different types of produce." Isn't that an excellent distinction?

Claire does not mention flowers, but I think of artichokes (see last post), broccoli, nasturtium flowers.

An artichoke confession

First confession: I have spent fifteen minutes just looking for a suitable image of an artichoke, and for an ephemeral product, a blog.

Second: I abandoned another vegetable this week, this time the artichoke. It was a lovely thing, fat and ready to eat (after steaming) when I bought it--and then I forgot it. Yesterday I noticed it in the refrigerator drawer, brown and dry, leaf points curled up, stem covered with more of that white mildew. I put it in the compost bin, stuffed it in, rather, with the watermelon rind.

Third: Instead of eating my artichoke, I ate two bars of Dove chocolate. One bar was for me to eat, an indulgence. The second bar was for my daughter, but the dog got to it and ruined one end. It lay on the counter and I couldn't resist it, after breaking off the tooth marks.

Mea culpa!

Succotash

My children will not eat succotash, which puzzles me because it is such comfort food. The photo is from Southern Food.

I remember my mother directing a succotash production line one summer at a farm in northern New Jersey. Ears of corn and fresh lima beans were arriving in brown grocery bags, in abundance. There were pots of boiling water on the stove, and we were all--father, brothers, mother, shucking corn, tossing it into the pots, and shelling beans to the same end.

Then someone had to take a carving knife and slice the cooked kernels off the husks. The last task was to combine equal amounts of corn and limas into plastic freezer bags, which would then go into the freezer chest behind the picnic table in a room off the kitchen. This was my grandfather's farm, not ours, but we loved it as though it were our only home, and the memories of the summer vegetables are as strong as the longing to swim in the pond or fish for trout in the brook or make echoes up on the hill in the evening. I notice, about the vegetables, that there was nothing exotic, such as broccoli rabe, or Vidalia onions, or bok choy. There must have been zucchini--as a child maybe I blocked it out. But this was in the 1970s, before Mrs. Child and her food revolution had truly begun.

Vegetable imagery

Lovely photo, yes? A photo by Gloria-Leigh Logan, at Acclaim Images Stock Photography.

Can you identify all the vegetables? I count at least 15, more if you count each color of sweet pepper separately.

However, there is a piece of something that does not look to me like a vegetable, but a fruit.

There will be a prize for the person who IDs the most vegetables correctly and makes the best case for the fruit being a vegetable, or vice versa.

Aristotle and Vegetables

I tried to find out about this vegetative business (vegetables as dull, inanimate) first by Googling, where I found a gazillion references to the Bahai faith, religion, alternative religions, evolution, Darwin, etc. My search term was "animal vegetable mineral Aristotle". But, no luck. Then I went to one of my favorites, the Britannica Online, and scanned pages and pages about Aristotle. Extensive history, including Alexander the Great, Logic, Prime Movers, etc., but no vegetable vs. animal vs. mineral discussion.

So here is my wikipedia-type thinking: even though we consider vegetables essential for our health, and want everyone to think of them as delightful, charming, lively sources of nutrition, full of color, life, and energy, the trouble is that they don't, from the Aristotelian point of view, have a soul, or anima. In other words, they are better than rocks, but have no personhood. Even the liveliest leafy green plant, the most colorful rainbow swiss chard, is no better than a baking potato with its rough brown skin and coarse shape.

No wonder people resist eating their vegetables.

More beets, and eggplant

I bought three large beets today, and this afternoon, despite the heat, I boiled them until tender. After peeling, I sliced them and pickled them with the beet juice, vinegar, sugar, bay leaf, 3 pepper corns, 2 cloves, and slices of green pepper. They are delicious, assuming you relish the sweet-sour combination.

Not only was I being a virtuous housewife, to make such swift use of the beets, but also by using up a chunk of green pepper which otherwise would most likely have gone the way of yesterday's beets. The recipe, by the way, is from The Joy of Cooking.

Before this, I roasted an eggplant, also bought today, in the manner of aubergine en gigot--the little spears of garlic inserted into the fresh vegetable, which is then baked for an hour, allowed to drain, peeled, and chopped, with the addition, in this case, of parsley, lemon peel and juice, olive oil, and fresh yoghurt. This recipe is from Greens rather than Elizabeth David.

At this point, despite the heat, I am pleased with myself. If only the sensation would last.

Salad and beets

Here is L.H. Bailey on salad, in 1905: “Doubtless all vegetables ought to be fresh; but with salad plants the demand is imperative. A good salad cannot be made from wilted or stale plants. For this reason the best salads are practically prohibited to people who do not have their own gardens. The plants should be freshly picked within half an hour of mealtime.” This from The Principles of Vegetable Gardening, p.357. The book was donated by the Shaw family to the Belmont Historical Society--Herbert Shaw used it during his studies at the Massachusetts Agricultural College, now UMass Amherst, before he came home to run the Shaw Estate farm in Belmont.

As for those beets . . . After I sliced off the cloudy tops and roots I put a plastic bag over them and left them to sit on the cutting board for a day or two. Then, feeling that I was getting a grip on myself, I put them in a small saucepan with water and boiled them for half an hour. Then I drained them. Then I ignored them some more. Then I decided to pull myself together and eat them. I was going to heat them up and slice them with butter and paprika. However, by this time they were covered in a fascinating sticky substance, a stringy, sugary covering with the appearance of cheesecloth. So I put them in the compost bucket instead. I think you would say this was an awful waste of good beets, but to me it has the feeling of an experiment, or, perhaps, an investigation. There is a zucchini in the bottom drawer I have my eye on . . .