I would be grounded,
rooted.
Said my head would not keep flying away to where the darkness is.
So I know I said, like two weeks ago, that this is not a cooking blog… But it is a detailed and frequently self-deprecating account of my triumphs and failures. So! Today we’re going to talk about parsnips. First, let me explain some basic principles I hold to be true in my heart.
1. Vegetables are
associated with Adulthood.
I probably gleaned this little nugget from the media. Please
don’t ask which media, because I’ll tell you it was Dance Moms. According to
Lifetime, adult women survive on a steady diet of salads, cosmos, and malicious
gossip. Granted, women who permanently cripple their daughters’ sense of
self-worth for three seasons of television fame probably aren’t exemplary
adults. But media!
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| Is butter a carb? |
Realistically, the connection between adulthood and
vegetable consumption remains as perplexing as other parallels I’ve drawn. For
example, the ‘pinnacle of wealth’ means ‘owning a Mazda Miata’ and ‘Kelly
Clarkson’ equals ‘succubus from hell’.
2. Adult is intrinsically
connected to Successful.
In four days I will be 25 years old. I don’t have a car. I spent last year selling plasma to pay my student loans. I spend 8
hours a day being paid to answer phones and scroll through pictures of pug
puppies. Last week a friend had to define the terms ‘socialized healthcare’ and
‘subsidies’ over coffee, because my brain has a firm handle on movie quotes and
Spice Girls lyrics, but everything else baffles me. Nothing about my current lifestyle reads
‘successful human being’. Sure, I could get a more challenging job. Buy a new
car. Study the intricacies of the healthcare system. Learn to quote
philosophers instead of Chris Farley.
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| Hey Richard! Fat guy in a little coat... |
Or! I can eat vegetables, and feel like a mo’fucking adult
(see Point 1 above).
Synopsis: vegetables are adult, adult is success, eat
vegetables, achieve success. I know there are reasons above and beyond this
flawed logic for eating vegetables. Health benefits, sustainability
issues, so on, so forth. But really I eat vegetables to feel morally superior
to myself. That makes sense in someone's world.
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Since I want to feel successful with minimal effort, I
recently signed up for a program called Organics to You, which delivers
local, organic produce right to my front stoop. Unfortunately for me, “local and
organic” also means seasonal. Enter the confusing landscape of autumnal vegetables.
I’ve managed to wrap my limited cooking skills around potatoes, carrots, beets,
and several varieties of squash. But I was accruing a pretty vast collection of
parsnips and celery root (AKA Davey Jones’ hearts).
My research indicates celery root needs to be
washed/peeled/cooked /pureed and that is just too many steps to consume
something so ugly. So I’ve been sneaking my celery root into A’s fridge hoping
her chef roommate will put them to good use. That left me with parsnips. If I
had the motivation to draw you a Venn diagram right now, parsnips would be the
overlap between carrots, potatoes, and radishes. [Note: don’t eat them raw. You’ll be tempted, because they look like
weird albino carrots, but just don’t. Too much starch, too much spice, too much
dirt. Just too much. It’s not fun, don’t do it.] After three weeks of
accumulating parsnips I knew something had to be done.
Similar to celery root, most of the recipes I found said “puree
the shit out of these, because they’re a strange and confusing thing”. But you
guys, I really hate pureeing. 1) Because you have to wash your food processor
and 2) because chewing is a big deal to me. Disregarding the peel/puree portion
of every recipe left me with smother in oil/roast until they no longer resemble
vegetables.
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| This is how you food? |
[Note: This is the
part where I would like to pat myself on the back for achieving basic human
tasks. But I’m sitting at the bar next to a woman named Critter, and suddenly I
am bored talking about parsnips. Let’s skip the self-congratulations. Maybe the
end will be more interesting. Also, this is what I ended up with.]
I don’t really know where I was going with all of this. But
I guess what you can take away is my false and overblown sense of success
following moderate accomplishments. We are all just the human being story we’re
telling ourselves, and mine currently involves a Master Chef narrative thread.
No big deal. I hope you are all managing to successfully feed yourselves this
holiday season! Sidenote: if you want the recipe for these roasted parsnips, they actually turned out pretty fucking delicious. Get at me, homies.
All of my love.
-b
