Vegetable Stories: short-shorts on a theme

 

Of course, we travelled again to Erice in Western Sicilia to enjoy Maria Grammatico's most delicious almond paste candies, hand-painted with edible fruit and vegetable colors, to talk to the amazing rug weavers (my wife has been a weaver), and to revisit the hotel where we had stayed on our honeymoon twenty years before. And, since some things do not change quickly, modern or not, we found that our Hotel Moderno still serves excellent fare, including the freshest fish brought into Trapani harbor, just down the hill and to the southeast. Plus full plates of spinaci all’aglio e olio (spinach with garlic and oil— and plenty of salt, of course). The oldest city in Europe, Erice, always an odd, often silent, town, perhaps for the entire 10,000 years it has sat on its hill. On the clearest days from Eryx, Erice’s ancient name, one can see south all the way to Africa, to Tunisia, and to the east, all the way across the island, perhaps see smoke, amazingly, from the very tip-top of the Vulcano Aetna, the tallest active volcano in all of Europe.
    - Alan Bern



Tomato: fruit or vegetable? However hard my father argues, grandad won’t accept “fruit.” He doesn’t care a jot about the seeds. You wouldn’t pour cream on tomatoes — says grandad. You wouldn’t make a crumble with tomatoes — he continues. They’re not sweet — he concludes. Dad counters with cherry tomatoes. Grandad hesitates but both his crumble and cream arguments hold up so he sticks to his guns. Dad heads off to find the encyclopedia. Grandad scans the entry. He looks my dad in the eye. You shouldn’t believe everything you read — he says and walks off.
    - Alan Peat



The almost forty-year-old asparagus bed is tired. After years of giving me early spring offerings, the plants have simply run out of energy. This year there were maybe two suppers worth of delicate spears, a negligible output, and even those seemed exhausted. At the end of gardening season last year, acknowledging a finality, I dug up the roots in one section of the bed and left it to rest. This year, after adding copious amounts of compost and manure, I sowed kale and chard seeds in their place. The seeds sprouted, though slowly, and now the plants look confused, as if they’ve invaded another’s territory and are not sure how to act. They are not the robust specimens of years past — instead they seem vulnerable and susceptible. And this morning I see there is someone snacking on them. I perceive a lack of confidence and resilience, a disorientation as to place and time. Maybe in the next few weeks they’ll come around. I can’t help but think they’re in mourning, reticent about accepting an ending and embracing a beginning.
    - Ann Carter



I dug alongside the grownups with my little sandbox spade as they turned the square-shaped back lawn into a vegetable garden. I understood this call to Dig for Victory was not to find a person but I didn’t understand how growing vegetables could win the war. Pea and bean seeds were planted here, along with root vegetables. I helped to drop the seeds into the holes. Then we went to the sheltered side lawn where, again, the grass was dug up. I helped make the little holes in the earth where the starters of lettuce, spinach, Brussels sprouts and cabbage were planted. There was still the front of the house where there was no lawn, only rose beds. For a while everyone stood and looked over there, then the grownups, except for my uncle, went into the house, taking us children with them. Curious, I went to the front window and looked out. My uncle was slowly digging up the rose bushes and piling them on the driveway. My aunt came up beside me. “He’s going to be planting potatoes.” We stayed by the window and watched. When all the bushes were dug up my uncle put a match to them, and as they slowly burned, smoke drifting around him, he planted potatoes.
    - Antonia Matthew



I live in a small community north of Boston. The town common consists of a one-window post office, police station, historic town hall, a church, a doll museum, a teahouse, and on a side street, the senior center. Notice recently went out that fruit and vegetables from local farms would be available for weekly pickup at the senior center. There is a food pantry in town, but this offer was for all seniors, regardless of need. At first I was reluctant, as I can afford to buy groceries, but the invitation welcomed all seniors. I overcame my hesitation and surveyed the four tables of cartons filled with produce — onions, sweet potatoes, bright yellow summer squash, Granny Smiths, string beans — and other items contributed by local merchants: gingerbread cookies, small jugs of laundry detergent, Bartlett pears wrapped individually in thin paper. This generous bounty from my community brought to mind my husband, now gone, bringing in armfuls of veggies from the garden and spreading them out proudly on our kitchen counter, his love language to me and our family. Today, emptying the contents of my basket, I felt some of that love, again.
    - Barrie Levine



Mom’s garden was a section of our back yard the size of a tennis court. Every spring she drew up her plans, ordered seeds, and got all excited about growing the vegetables her four kids needed in order to be strong and healthy. She was raised on a farm in western Kansas, helping her older sisters tend big gardens full of good food. She felt this was in her blood. But, year after year, it was really only in her mind. She could imagine rows upon perfect rows of carrots, onions, potatoes, corn, beans, etc. But somehow the seeds never got planted correctly, or watered enough when it didn’t rain for weeks on end. Mom’s dream garden couldn’t exist without her sisters to help and guide her. And her disappointment was palpable every time she reached for a frozen bag of peas or corn. Sadly quiet, she did her best to feel this was still a healthy choice for her family.
    - Blue Waters



Zucchini, like fat baseball bats, grew profusely in my garden in 1972. I had no idea how to cook them. The rural Midwest provided excellent, black soil for growing prize vegetables and perfect tomatoes, but the population was not yet familiar with “exotic “ vegetables. I knew nothing about picking zucchini when it is tiny and tender. I knew a few people who boiled it in water, but that produced a thick greenish mess, like soggy paper. The baseball bat zucchini proved to be useful, however. At that time I had two German Shorthair Pointers who were too wild to stay confined to their kennel. When we made the fences taller, they dug holes under the fences. Every morning, I called them from lounging on our bed, fed them, and locked them up in the useless kennel. Every afternoon, loping free, they bolted down the driveway to meet my car, barking like maniacs. Since farmers are likely to shoot stray dogs, we needed new ideas immediately. Hey, what about ZUCCHINI, I thought! Those overgrown squash fit perfectly into the escape tunnels. On my knees, I stuffed one zucchini into one tunnel. Using a garden spade to modify each subsequent hole, I twisted in more zucchini, until every gap was filled. This brilliant solution worked. The unhappy dogs were thwarted. I eventually learned to cook the small, tender, delicious, thin-sliced, squash. I started with zucchini parmigiana: made from scratch with succulent garlic, onion, and thick chunks of homegrown tomato in the sauce. I added zucchini to stir-fried vegetables and savory ratatouille. Ahh, zucchini and sweet, red, peppers, sautéed in olive oil and garlic, served on a crisp bruschetta — a much superior use of squash than imprisoning dogs.
    - Carole Johnston



Cotter, Dalton, and Henderson shared a locker at Boston Latin Middle School, and a certain smell always emanated from there. The boys’ coats, gym clothes, books, even their lunch satchels took on a distinct, permeating aroma. Cotter loved his mother’s eggplant parm sandwiches, and she made sure her boy had his favorite at least three times a week. Dalton didn’t seem to mind much, but the smell turned Henderson’s stomach upside down every day, especially when wearing his gym uniform which stayed in the locker 24/7. Many years later I shared this story about my husband (he is the Henderson) with my older sister, Robin. For Christmas that year she wrapped up a gorgeous, shiny, purple eggplant and handed the present to my husband with a flourish. After opening the gift, he tilted his head to one side in confusion, wondering what he was holding. He started tossing the beauty back and forth like a football, rubbed the smooth surface, even sniffed at the green stem. Flummoxed, he finally asked, “Okay, I give up. What the hell is this?” Robin couldn’t resist laughing before revealing the answer, and when she did, he gently chucked the eggplant at her as she sat on the couch. My sister transitioned to spirit last June, but her sense of humor and mischievousness that Christmas morning will always bring a smile.
    - Deborah Burke Henderson



When I was growing up, my mother mainly served three vegetables: green beans, peas, and corn. Occasionally she might surprise us with broccoli or canned beets. That’s why, on my first day of summer camp in Georgia, at age seven, I was terrified to see on my dinner plate what looked to me like a pile of fat yellow slugs. When I asked a counselor what they were, she said, “They’re butter beans. Eat up!” I speared one of the ghastly things with my fork and brought it tentatively to my mouth. In it went. Yuck! Ugh! Blaah! I gagged, and spit the mushy bean into my napkin. “You have to eat at least one mouthful of everything on your plate,” a counselor reminded me. “That’s the rule. Eat just one and swallow it!” This time I gagged so hard that I vomited on the tablecloth. The girl next to me cried, “Ewww!” and scooted as far down the bench as she could. The counselor took pity on me, and after fetching a towel to clean the table, told me I could skip butter beans for the rest of the summer. Whew! Everything else was delicious — especially the crunchy, juicy Southern fried chicken!
    - Emily Rhoads Johnson



When I was little, sweets were a rare thing.Towards the end of autumn and then in the winter, when we felt like something good to eat, and if we hadn't made any mess of things, we begged my grandmother to bake butternut squash. My brother and I would first go to the barn, where they were stored in a pile, and pick out a nice one, wash it well, then cut it in half and gently eviscerate it. We were sorry to kill him this way, but hunger helped us get over it. Grandma then took it, but she didn't cut it into small pieces, only larger ones, sometimes even quarters, depending on how fat the squash was. We were always glad to have large portions to enjoy. She put them in the oven with some sugar on top, because we still didn't have access to honey. As soon as she took it out of the oven (half an hour was an eternity for us) she sprinkled on a little ground cinnamon. A delight! The best dessert in the world! We were as impatient as kittens and could not wait to receive our soft and tasty gold bar. When I close my eyes, my younger self still winks at me. It was all so yummy!!!
    - Florin C. Ciobica



What’s the first thing a young man from the city decides to do when he moves to a country house in upstate New York? You guessed it. Plant a bed of asparagus. And what does the gardening book he consults recommend for the rocky soil on the hillside behind his house? Right again. Plenty of fertilizer— preferably organic. I called the farm down the road that advertised fresh cow manure. “Just one load?” I said that was probably enough, not realizing that the farmer was talking pickup trucks not wheelbarrows. I told him he could drive over our side lawn to the back of the house. Unfortunately, it had rained that morning and, when I returned from work that afternoon, I saw the deep ruts in the lawn where the truck had bogged down. I also saw the small mountain of manure that the farmer had dumped on our neighbor’s driveway in order to free his truck. Dashing back and forth with my wheelbarrow, I had barely made a dent in the steaming heap before my neighbor and his wife came to a screeching halt at the entrance to what had been their driveway. Two years later, we shared the first crop of tender asparagus along with a bottle of wine and a wheelbarrow of laughs.
    - Jack Goldman



Our holiday rental is a two-story stone cottage nestled in a shadowed hillside above the Ligurian Sea. Built from rough gray-green boulders and dark slate, the small house sits behind a thirteenth-century church tower that holds three out-of-tune bells, devotedly rung before every mass. At the southeast corner of the house, a trickling rivulet runs through a culvert constructed as part of the original medieval walls. Silver-leafed olive trees frame the cottage and soften the midday sun. The setting is magical, made more so by a forest of five-foot-tall fennel plants filling the front yard. Fennel, known in Italian by the playful-sounding word, finocchio, is a favorite vegetable and herb. Growing from a white, spherical base, the upright fennel stems are covered with feathery, green fronds — evocative of dozens of Ziegfeld Follies costumes. I harvest a single plant for tonight’s dinner. With a sharp knife, I remove the sturdy stalks and chop the anise-flavored bulb and fronds. I mix the fennel with peppery arugula, blood-orange segments, torn pieces of radicchio, toasted pine nuts, and a splash of fruity olive oil. Later, sitting on the terrace, we watch a half-moon rise above the clouds like a fennel bulb emerging from soil.
    - Jim Mazza



I was planning to buy an eggplant yesterday for Saturday night, the basis of  an eggplant and lentil dish I had enjoyed in Turkey. But in store after store, produce managers said, “No eggplant today.” Sighing, I drove to one more place — a store where  produce is always at  prices far above those of its neighbors. Walking in, I  immediately spotted among the multi-colored rows of vegetables a splash of purple — eggplants. Reaching out to pick one, I discovered that the wide swath of purple was one single vegetable, the largest eggplant I’d ever seen. I asked the produce man, “Do you have others?” He shook his head. “That’s the only one, my shipment today was absent the eggplants. It’s the last eggplant in Calabash.” I looked at the vegetable shaped like a small blimp. I smiled, bought it, and took it home. Today I cooked it, using several slices for my Turkish lentil dinner, several for fried Neapolitan-style sandwiches later in the week, and boiled some for a Sicilian eggplant appetizer. Travel has been halted recently, but this week an eggplant will be the airship on which we’ll  tour the Mediterranean.
    - Joan Leotta



The garden at my grandpa’s ramshackle cabin — “the club” as we called it — grew wild and untamed. Located on the floodplain of the Meramec River, the soil supported abundant vegetation. Grandma managed to keep the deer out by cordoning the area off with a chain-linked fence, but even she couldn’t control the bunnies. My grandparents planted many tempting vegetables in their small garden, but I set my eyes on their pole beans. Lush and abundant, that corner of the plot contained what looked like neatly spaced miniature teepees, each about 5 feet tall. Thick green vines weighted with beans — and the occasional snake! — wound around the wooden poles, giving the effect of an enchanted fairy village. One year, my grandparents grew gorgeous purple podded pole beans, native to this part of the Ozarks. I felt so cheated when boiling our magical beans turned them as green as all the others!
    - Julie Bloss Kelsey



Oh the flower fairies' feast my invitation a well kept secret the vegetables are blooming ssshhh some see them all shiny and polished on shelves don't tell anybody about the flowers even gardeners forget after they pick the fruits of their labor the secret small blooms on the tomatoes the luscious squash flower omelet they could have had the exotic purple petals on aubergine the artichoke's exotic lavender thistle the okra blooms bluish glow secret scarlet of the emperor runner beans queen anne's crown on the overgrown carrot holding court in the night garden oh the vegetables' flower fairies' feast unseen to most humans squash cucumber watermelon muskmelon and me my love for carrot umbels' lovely, lacy lightly battered and deep fried rare delicacy oh not the wild hemlock ssshhh it never hurts to check
    - Kath Abela Wilson



Mother loved onions. From early spring, when the little green onions were among the first gifts from the garden, she had them by her plate. They were placed carefully, next to the silverware like a necessary part of the meal. They were there for all meals except breakfast. (Though, if she’d made eggs of some kind, the little onions were there, too.) As the onions grew bigger, she loved them in all stages of their development, right up to the time they were big as baseballs — softballs, even. Sometimes, she would hold one of these in her hand and eat it like an apple, one bite at a time. She loved them sliced with sharp cheddar cheese in a sandwich, placing the plate carefully on her lap when she watched “As the Word Turns” at 1:00 every weekday afternoon. Her breath was redolent of onion every day. It became her signature scent. When she eventually had to live at Ridgeview Eldercare, the cooks were trained to place a large slice of onion on Mother’s plate. It seems fitting that she loved onions. Like an onion, Mother could be sharp and biting. But her underlying and overriding love has lingered in memory, just as the fragrance of an onion lingers each time I slice one for a salad, remembering her.    
    - Kathleen Kramer



Hand-lettered signs in front of roadside stands and old country stores throughout the southern U.S. — “Boil P-Nuts.” A post on Facebook last week reminded me that it's the season for fresh peanuts. I miss them. Especially boiled. I’m not sure why but they don’t seem to grow in the Midwest and no stores carry fresh ones. They need to be fresh and "green" — not dried out. But I should explain — peanuts are a vegetable. A legume. And what better way to get another serving or two of veggies than with boiled peanuts. Ladled out of a big cooker of salted water into a small brown paper sack. Best while still wet and warm. The juice dripping from your hands as you pinch the shell and slurp out the briny liquid before giving the shell the final crack and letting the soft nuts slide into your mouth. They are a messy but oh-so-tasty snack food. Veggies don’t get much better — except okra.
    - Margaret Walker



How I long for a plateful of chopped okra, rolled in egg and cornmeal, then fried in a cast iron pan readied with sizzling hot oil. I’ve tried, but can’t replicate that exact flavor or texture my parents and my aunt could cook so flawlessly. Forget finding a restaurant that prepares it the same way, no matter how many claims they make about serving southern style meals. My husband was raised outside of the south, never had okra, and detests it. When I compromise and eat the frozen version of the whole pod he turns up his nose … how can you eat that stuff? I like it just fine, though it's not nearly as good as the garden-grown and southern hand-cooked version, but it is still a little reminder of the food heaven I once inhabited.
    - Pris Campbell



My early days as a dishwasher in a bowling alley eatery taught me a lot about veggies. I formed a deep appreciation for green beans. Green bean pots were the easiest to wash. So little scrubbing. Respect! Asparagus, too. We had no electric dishwasher at that little diner. Only me! I showed the hungry customers to their tables, then rushed to the little kitchen to dish up their pre-prepared meals, then hurried to wash up everything afterwards. Bean soup, ugh. Spinach was tricky, and messed up the sink drain. Fried zucchini, no fun. My glasses would get splattered. The gigantic spaghetti sauce pot was a killer, barely fit in the single sink. Methinks that’s why the secret of our sauce was a faint hint of dish soap.
    - Roberta Beach Jacobson



The first time I encountered an eggplant was probably as a little kid. I really don't recall, but I do remember eating many servings of Grandma's savory eggplant parmigiana — inimitable! Makes my mouth water just thinking about it. I've always been intrigued by the eggplant's brownish purple color. And recently I learned it comes in white, too. Who knew? Technically, it's not a vegetable; it's a fruit of the nightshade family, actually a berry since it has all those seeds. Its French name is a mouthful but seems to fit: “aubergine.” Or perhaps an even fancier moniker: "brinjal," of Indian and Middle Eastern origin via Portugal. Once, a co-worker was repulsed by the thought of eating it. I'd packed left-overs for lunch including a couple of slices of the beloved family dish and proffered a piece. “How can a ‘plant’ be an ‘egg’ too?” she asked, recoiling slightly. “But it's the shape . . .” “Sorry, I'm not touching that thing let alone eating it!” I know better — you'll find me enjoying eggplant in various ways, from baba ganoush, to moussaka, even in Chinese stir fry. I'll take the funky veggie any day!
    - Theresa A. Cancro



Potatoes with red skins are named for Native Americans and it’s not a compliment any more than sports teams called Braves, Seminoles, and the late not so great Washington Redskins themselves. The potatoes I planted last year were Pontiacs and this year my sister Lisa and I put Chieftain seed potatoes in the ground at her place. Last year I got 7 bales of straw mulch stuffed in a jeep, driving all the way to the boonies of Candor to get them and then I went back and got 7 more. They were the perfect mulch for the Pontiacs and the fingerlings I grew at Cornell Community Garden. It took forever to get almost all the straw bits swept and vacuumed from that jeep last year so I wonder if I should warn Lisa when we go get mulch this year in her Honda CR-V.
    - Tina Wright



In my mother’s kitchen there were no fresh vegetables. Only cans where peas or carrots or string beans swam around in murky water. The peas were pale green; the carrots were cut into tiny squares; the string beans were often slimy and definitely too stringy. There were also jars of beets in case Grandpa ever stopped by and needed something borscht-y, even though all of his borscht needs were already being met by my grandmother, in their own kitchen. But the jars were stored high up in the cabinet over the sink, because my mother wanted to be prepared — just in case. Eventually I left that kitchen and went off to college. At the start of my freshman year I made a friend who was a senior; a philosophy major with her own apartment off campus. She talked to me about Plato and Sartre while standing at the stove cooking up delicious meals. She never wanted me to help. That was smart of her because I wasn’t especially skilled with a knife (never having used one at home). In that cramped apartment that smelled strongly of patchouli I became introduced to vegetables that were fresh and alive. Asparagus — long thin stalks of them, drizzled with garlic butter. Broccoli, quickly steamed and slightly crispy, also drizzled with garlic butter. One night we sat across from each other at my friend’s tiny kitchen table and I met an artichoke for the first time. Yes, garlic and butter were also present. I have to wonder, right now, as I write this, did I like the vegetables so much or was it all about the garlic? And the butter? Or maybe I was just enamored of the cook.
    - Zee Zahava