Who on the planet pulled a parsnip from the ground and thought, “Hmm. This looks good. Let’s eat!”?
Perhaps one of the ugliest of all root vegetables, parsnips are downright unappealing as a potential food item. No wonder all recommendations are to cube these suckers into small bits and cook them to death!
While they might go well in a stew, this cousin of wax-covered chalk, with a consistency of rolled up carpet, has managed to maintain its prominence in the produce section of grocery stores everywhere for…well…ever!
What’s worse, they came packaged in a bundle of six. SIX! I used three in a stew that called for two. I think I could put the balance of my parsnip inventory in a dark corner of the basement and forget them until next year – and they’d still be perfectly ready to be peeled and cooked.
The upside to parsnips come in its nutritional value. They have a great amount of potassium, although I prefer bananas during a lengthy bike ride to one of these dead clammy roots. They’re also mildly loaded with carbs.
And what nimble root veggie scientist looked at this and named it a parsnip? Did it remind him/her of a pair of nipples? Is it really pinsrap in disguise? At least the sweet potato has a meaningful name. It looks like a potato and it has a sweet taste. But “parsnip?” I’m stumped!
Coming up next, the sexuality of eggplant.
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Haha – I don’t eat a wide variety of veggies so I couldn’t tell you. But I think I have had parsnips and they were pretty good!
[Anxiously awaiting the next vegetable segment]!
You’re too funny! I’ve thought the exact same thing about many things we eat; oysters, eggs, crab, lobster, shrimp, but eggs especially!
You’re right Jill! The Egg Producers Association has to have the “incredible edible egg” campaign or people would sit and think ugly thoughts about where those eggs were coming from – and no one would eat them!
LOL! I love it! I have often wondered about the parsnip. It is an ugly thing. I have never eaten one, I probably never will.
I can’t say that I have ever likened them to ‘nipples’ though.. EW!
Okay do not put that in stew that is just defiling good stew and you know that albino turnip impersonator is not from Planet Earth clearly it is a pod root.