~a column by Colleen O’Brien
I’ve never met a vegetable I didn’t like.
Some I love — Brussels sprouts; oh, my.
There’s something so satisfying about vegetables. Raw, sautéed with onion and garlic (themselves vegetables), boiled, broiled, grilled, baked, juiced, made into smoothies or frozen bars on a stick (the only veggie frozen bar I make is from watermelon juice; spinach juice frozen on a stick is not a taste treat).
When it comes to fruits, of the more than 2,000 grown around the world, so far I’ve eaten all that have crossed my path.
They’re pretty, these fruits — so many colors and textures. The pure sensuousness of an eggplant (both a fruit and a vegetable, depending on who you’re talking to) compels many to photograph it, paint it on canvas, display it on the table for art’s sake. Think how many depictions of pears and apples you’ve seen hanging on the walls of art museums. Even the ugli fruit isn’t all that ugly; it resembles a dirty grapefruit and it’s delicious — a citrus combination of lemon and orange.
There is no doubt that meat tastes good, but a slab of raw T-bone isn’t often seen in a still life.
The kohlrabi may be my favorite vegetable for its endearingly laughable look. It’s a pale spring green sputnik-like whimsy of nature — round with branch-like arms all over it. It’s related to the cabbage. I buy one at the Farmers Market, put it on the top of a slim vase and set it on the coffee table, something to make me smile. And then after a week or so, when the arms begin to wilt, I peel it and eat it, raw, with salt. It’s good in soups.
I’ve never really had that desire for fun with carnivore food that I’ve had with a kohlrabi.
Eating an aubergine (the pretty French word for eggplant) is a taste delight. Eggplant parmesan is irresistible. So is eggplant simply sautéed to a crisp in olive oil. Or baked, with tomatoes. Or grilled and put in a salad. Vegetables are inexpensive (compared to meat). They’re often handy — grab a carrot from the garden, a pear from your backyard tree, a cherry from your neighbor’s. Unlike a slab of meet sitting on the counter oozing blood, a plant (veggie or fruit) sits on your counter shining, glowing seductively in a bowl with its fruit friends and veggie mates.
There are so many kinds of edible plants. If you play the alphabet game with your kids in the car (for example, name flowers, countries, cities, boy’s names, girls names from A to Z), try it with vegetables: asparagus, beets, carrots, dandelion greens, eggplant, fava beans, garlic, horseradish, jicama, kale, leek, maize, Navy beans, okra, potato, rutabaga, sweet corn, turnip, watermelon, yam, zucchini. [Without the help of Mrs. Google, I couldn’t come up with I, Q, U, V or X veggies. On your own, can you?]
You can also play the alphabet game with fruits: apple, blueberry, cherry, date, elderberry, fig, guava, huckleberry, “I”? “J”? lemon, mango, nectarine, orange, pear, quince, raspberry, strawberry, tangerine, ugli, “V”? watermelon, “X”? “Y”? zucchini.
Our bodies love protein, some of which we can get with peas, artichokes, spinach, potatoes, Navy beans and eggplant. Our taste buds quickly become fond of, if not in fact addicted to, an apple a day. If we can train our bodies to crave water, we can give it a go with veggies and fruits. They do good things for our digestion. Besides not making us fat, they strengthen our systems, make us healthy and vigorous with their vitamins, minerals and fibery makeup.
The number of veggies in the world varies wildly from around 450 to about 870, depending on the expert. It probably has something to do with the confusion between fruits and vegetables. Ignorance, opinion and outright indignation contribute to folks deciding exactly what department tomatoes, watermelon, eggplant, okra, zucchini belong in. Sometimes it’s about the seeds, sometimes it’s about the area of the world they’re grown in, now and then it’s about how they grow. There are biological explanations, often as indeterminate as outright bias. From what I can conclude, classify them however you want, even on the often wrong guideline of savory indicating a veggie, sweet a fruit.
Whether the elegant eggplant is a fruit or a vegetable means little. But it is a plant, and it’s good for you. Eat it. Eat it alone or with its siblings and cousins. Or with your pork chop.
