Fruits & Vegetables – THE SPECTACLED BEAN

Let Us Talk Lettuce: Roaming For Romaine

Walking into the grocery store, my list in hand, looking for first item on my list, green leaf lettuce.

Am about to grab some green leaf lettuce when I’m approached by young woman, early 20s, cute in a confused but earnest way, who asks me if she can ask me a question.

And so the conversation began…

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HER: I’m supposed to buy my dad some romaine lettuce.

{pause}

ME: Yes…

{pause}

HER: I don’t understand where the romaine lettuce is…

ME: It’s down the way to our–

HER: This isn’t romaine lettuce, is it?

[She has a plastic bag filled with something green and leafy. She puts the plastic bag directly in front of my face, about 6″ in front of my eyes… because I’m old, I guess, and she wants to make sure that I can see what is in the bag.]

ME: No, that’s Napa cabbage. It’s not romaine lettuce.

HER: This is CABBAGE? In the lettuce department?

ME: Yes, it’s leafy and looks sort of like romaine lettuce, but it’s cabbage… and won’t work if you’re looking for lettuce.

{pause}

HER: What does it taste like?

ME: Cabbage.

{pause}

HER: Is that lettuce? It’s red.

ME: Yes, that’s red leaf lettuce. It’s lettuce… as is the green leaf lettuce beside it that I’m going to buy.

HER: Lettuce can be RED?

ME: Yes.

{pause}

HER: I don’t understand lettuce. How do you know which one is which?

ME: There are little tags on the shelves below each kind of lettuce that tell you what it is.

[She takes the opportunity to turn her head sideways and notice the little tags, reading a few of them.]

HER: Huh. That’s helpful.

ME: Yes it is. Now if you go down the way to our right–

HER: LOOK AT THAT! The tag says Napa cabbage. That’s what I picked up.

ME: Uh huh. Down the way, to our right, there are bags of–

HER: What am I going to do with this Napa cabbage that I don’t want?

ME: Put it back. On the shelf. With all the other Napa cabbages.

{pause}

HER: I can do that?

ME: Yes, and down the way, to our right, there are bags of romaine lettuce that have three–

HER: THREE!!! Yes, that’s what my dad said. Bags of three. Where are they?

ME: Down the way. To our right, where the big sign talks about–

HER: Yes, yes. I see it. How did I miss it? Thanks.

[She scampers off to buy a bag of romaine lettuce, leaving me to finish my sentence, unheard and definitely unheeded.]

ME: — where the big sign talks about the current dangers surrounding consumption of romaine lettuce.

~ The End ~

Orange Sky At Night, Tomatoes Take Fright

A SHORT STORY

One day the Lady of the House carefully planted a few pots of herbs + one pot of small patio tomatoes. There was joy in the land.

The sky was blue above, forsooth.

Cardinals, sitting in trees, shooketh their tail feathers.

Cute garden tags proclaimed what was in each herb pot.

However, one evening a magical thunderstorm rolled through the land turning the sky to a weird shade of orange, creating a beautiful unexpected rainbow. Things had changed.

At first, the Lady of the House was charmed by the rainbow, until she saw that the storm winds had snapped her tomato plant in two. She was sad.

But the Lady of the House, being ever hopeful and raised on fairy tales, put the little green tomatoes in a dish on the kitchen table near a sunny window.

Where, alas & alack, despite the Lady of the House’s tender care, the little tomatoes remain green and inedible to this day.

THE END

T Is For Turnip, Like Totally

Just Fell off the Turnip Truck

… is an idiom meaning that someone is naive or gullible. It refers to the idea that someone riding on top of the produce in the back of a flatbed truck is a country bumpkin who will be taken advantage of in the city by the smooth-talking folk.

I’ve never seen a truckload of turnips, which probably comes as no surprise to you.

What will also come as no surprise to you, my gentle readers, is the fact that I’ve got nothing to talk about on the topic of turnips.

Well, that’s not entirely true.

I could tell you that I have a t-shirt that has a turnip printed on the front of it with the words “turnip the volume.” It’s a dumb pun, but the shirt is comfy.

But do you care about that t-shirt?

Probably not.

So instead of pretending I’ve something to say, allow me to suggest that we once again agree that I showed up here, in good faith, and posted something as per the challenge guidelines.

Thus I hereby declare that I have written about the letter “T.”

And the A To Z Challenge continues on Monday…

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{ SOMETHING TO DO FOR FUN }

Here’s a link to a lovely downloadable “fabric swatch” that features, among many vegetables, ye olde turnip. Very cute.

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S Is For Succotash, So Sayeth I

Sufferin’ Succotash

… is what Sylvester the Cat says when confronted with yet another dilemma. Sylvester James Pussycat, Sr., is a Looney Tunes star who almost always fails at what he’s trying to achieve.

Screen Shot 2016-04-06 at 10.11.43 AM — { Image Source }

But did you know that his famous saying, “sufferin’ succotash,” is an example of a minced oath?

A minced oath is a term that refers to a word or phrase modified from rude, crude &/or blasphemous to a more benign saying that does not offend, but still imparts the same message.

For instance, when you say darn it to heck, that is a minced oath of damn it to hell. When you say egads [and you do say egads, right?], that is a minced oath of oh god.

And when you say sufferin’ succotash, that is a minced oath of suffering savior, which at one time was vile thing to say.

[… and you doubted the value of a liberal arts education! How else would I know something this obscure, yet arguably, interesting? Hmmm?]

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R Is For Rhubarb, Rightly So

“Lady, you know what happens at a sale, when two women get hold of the same dress? THAT’s a Rhubarb!”

~ Rhubarb, a 1951 baseball movie

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I chose rhubarb as my letter “R” because, beyond knowing that it’s a tart vegetable with great health benefits, I knew there was a cute old movie about baseball and a cat named Rhubarb.

I remember seeing the movie somewhere along the line, and from that movie I knew that rhubarb was a slang term in baseball meaning a disagreement or a fight.

What I did not know when I started researching rhubarb is that the word is sometimes defined as nonsense. As in you might say: “Jane is talking rhubarb.”

I also did not know that “rhubarb” is the word that extras in a play say while onstage to create background noise.

I also did not know that “on a rhubarb” was WWII fighter pilot slang for being on a strafing mission on enemy ground.

Finally, I also did not know that “hitting the rhubarb” is slang for getting so drunk that you can’t drive without going off the road.

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And that, kids, is today’s installment of my A To Z Challenge theme, FOOD: Talking The Talk.

Q Is For Quince, Let Us Quote

“They dined on mince, and slices of quince, Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon, the moon.
They danced by the light of the moon.”

~ Edward Lear, The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

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Screen Shot 2016-04-11 at 1.42.13 PM — { Image Source }

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I like quinces.

They’ve been around Europe since before medieval times, mentioned in literature by both the Romans and the Greeks.

If you’ve ever seen one in the produce section of the grocery store here on this side of the pond, you know that they’re pretty to look at, a nice yellow color.

Albeit they’re as hard as a butternut squash when you go to cut into one, they have an interesting shape, as seen in the image above.

They taste like spicy pear to me, and are delicious when made into a jelly or jam.

Or yummy as Membrillo [aka quince paste] with some Spanish Manchego Cheese OR Irish White Cheddar Cheese.

On an English Water Cracker, of course. OR on an Italian Crostini, if that’s what you have around.

Perhaps with a glass of chilled New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc while sitting on a North American deck, waiting for the sun to set and the moon to rise, enjoying nature.

Yes, this is what I think of when I think of quinces: charming words, delicious international nibbles + kicking back to relax.

See why I like ’em?

P Is For Parsnips, Most Peculiar

“Fine words butter no parsnips.”

This is an old English proverb that means empty words or flattery achieve nothing. The idea being that buttering food makes it taste better, but it’s still the same food.

I first remember hearing this proverb on an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

Olivia d’Abo as Nicole Wallace played an accomplished grifter who was always one step ahead of Vincent D’Onofrio as Detective Robert Goren aka Bobby. She tormented Bobby, the brainiac, like a cat with a mouse, and at one point while he was trying to find a way to put her in jail, she said the above saying.

The saying stuck with me, and is my only “real life” experience with this saying.

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{ SOMETHING TO DO FOR FUN }

If you’re a fan of vegetables and of Walt Disney World, you may remember that during the 1980s & 1990s there was The Kitchen Kabaret show at The Land Pavilion in Epcot.

The show was a hoot, complete silliness– with a memorable theme song. Click HERE to listen to the “Veggie, Veggie, Fruit, Fruit” song. Click HERE to see some photos of the show.

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