On root vegetables

On root vegetables

I am, I have realised, a middle-class Guardian reader.

How do I know this?

Once a fortnight, a bloke in a van turns up and delivers a box of seasonal organic fruit and veg, for rather more than you'd probably pay in your local supermarket.

We'd shop in Waitrose, but our town isn't enlightened enough to have one, and if they do, they'd probably burn it down on suspicion of witchcraft, or something.

So, the vegetable box, it is.

Things being seasonal, we get mud-encrusted examples of things we never new existed, and each delivery is met with a cry of "What the bloody hell's this?", closely followed by "And how do we cook it?"

And so, a few weeks ago we got a bag of brown knobbly things, that went straight in the drawer at the bottom of the fridge. Two weeks later, we got another bag of brown knobbly things, so I thought it best to cook and eat them rather than let them go manky in the none-more-middle-class compost bin.

Jerusalem Artichokes. Slice 'em up. Boil them or bake them. Eat. Delicious.

In fact, they made a rather refreshing change to our diet, for we ate the lot in one go and ordered some more.

Alas, I did not know that these root veg are known by a completely different name.

Jerusalem Fartichokes.

Christ, if that's where they come from, no wonder there's a war.

GRELP!

FAAAARP!

SNOO-OOO-OO-OOOD!

PLAAAAAAAAAAARF!

For twelve hours.

The kids were pumping gas when they went to bed, the charming wife was contributing to the planet's CO2 emissions well into the night, and I was powering the car with jet propulsion all the way to work the next morning.

I looked them up on the net:

Good Housekeeping: Famous for giving you wind

VegBox: Eat in small quantities

Jamie Oliver: Wahey-hey!

Delia Smith: Farted until I crapped myself

A new Veggie Box arrived this week.

"Who do you hate at work?" my lovely wife asked.