She Who Must Be Kept The Hell Away From The Remote Control and I were watching the TV this morning, enjoying a hearty breakfast of various dead things. And beans. When who should pop up on the old idiot box, but some American woman styling herself 'The Barefoot Contessa' (despite obviously being neither married to an Italian conte*, descended from one, or awarded the title in her own right). And she was wearing shoes too. Completely false advertising.**
But what should we expect from a nation that allows places like Pottery Barn to exist? Which aren't barns and don't sell pots.
Anyway, this 'so-called Contessa' was cooking Thanksgiving dinner (so not only is she falsifying her title and wearing shoes, she doesn't know what time of year it is) and she looks at the camera and holds up a turnip. Then she says, "Now you may have seen these in the stores and wondered what to do with them..."
It's a turnip.
A TURNIP.
Who the hell, in the history of mankind has ever wandered into their local purveyor of root vegetables and said, "Well I'll be damned. Mavis, come look at this!"
"Ooh, what is it, Henry?"
"It's a ..." He squints and reads from the accompanying card. "Tur-nip."
"Wow... Tur-nip, huh?"
"Yup. Ain't it pretty?"
"Oh yeah, it's pretty all right, Henry. Pretty and exotic!"
"Yup. Pretty and exotic."
"Ooh! ooh!" She starts to jump up and down, clapping her hands. "Can we get one? Can we Henry? Huh? Can we?"
Henry sighs and puts the exotic turnip back on the pile. "I wanna, Mavis, I really do. But I got no idea what we'd do with it..."
It's a bloody turnip! You peel it, chop it up and boil it. Not exactly rocket science, is it? Of all the challenges facing mankind today -- global warming, disease, tea-towels, poverty, people who wear white socks with black shoes and trousers (WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU FREAKS?), and politicians -- 'what to do with a turnip' doesn't even make the top ten.
Mind you, maybe I've been spoiled in my life? You see, we had turnips on a regular basis. Oh yeah, all the time, Baby. Turnip-tastic, that's us. It was about the only thing that made haggis palatable when I was little. If you buried that nasty mushed up sheep's innards under enough buttered turnip (or 'neep' to give them their correct nomenclature) it was just about possible to choke the vile stuff down.
So I've never been intimidated by a turnip. In fact, when it comes to root vegetables I'm not scared of any of them. Oh yeah, a couple of Jerusalem Atrechokes tried to beat me up once and steal my wallet, but I just boiled them in salted water for ten minutes, and ate the bastards. Coz I'm that hard. Coming round here acting all rowdy and tuberous. I showed them.
Up here we don't take no shit from vegetables.
* Don't be rude.
** According to that font of all lies, half truths and the occasional unsubstantiated rumour Wikipedia, she's named after a shop she bought from someone. Which is a pretty bizarre way to come about a nickname.