The Forgotten Vegetable 1

            My Rutabaga journey really began two years ago when, due to supply-chain issues, there wasn’t anything but rutabagas on the shelves in the produce aisle. (Well, there were onions, but there are always onions.) I’ve had some experience with rutabagas. Yes, I have. I believe that rutabagas are a neglected staple crop, with a particular flavor which is kind of a cross between the tartness of a turnip, and the dense, work-a-day taste of the potato. Rutabagas are very versatile. That day, I bought a bunch of rutabagas, and pigged out on them. I breaded and deep-fried them. I had them in a casserole. I also chopped rutabaga sticks and munched on those constantly.

            I learned the rutabaga stick trick years ago when I was young and our family received a windfall of rutabagas.

            One lazy Saturday afternoon during the summer of ‘76, Mother started shouting names from the living room downstairs. I won’t go into details due to time constraints, but she shouted a list of all of our names, and we all gathered there with her as she looked out through the blinds of the living room window. She told us all to get anything large to put things in. Like, pots and bags, and that we did. When I had got my couple of bags, I went back to the window where my siblings, in order of seniority, had been joining Mom looking through the window.

            I got my turn to peer through the blinds with Mom, and, you guessed it, what I witnessed was the aftermath of a rutabaga spill. You see, in the small city there in Kansas where we lived, many of the residential intersections weren’t marked with stop signs, instead, if you were crossing a road that had a ‘crown’, that served as a yield sign. A man driving a flatbed truck with planks along the sides which held a couple of tons of rutabagas had sped over the crown of the intersection, and a couple hundred pounds of rutabagas had commenced to fly. Mom had been watching and waiting and I continued to watch the man with her. We watched him desultorily pick up a few more of the rutabagas scattered there, then he threw them into the back of the truck, and pulled off, leaving many still on the road.

            Mom swept her arm toward the window, at the object of our mission, and cried, “Go!”, and so we did, gathering abandoned rutabagas with our assigned containers.

            We had rutabaga casserole, of course, and rutabaga slaw that summer. I must have been well-hydrated that summer of ’76, because for three weeks, there was always a large Tupperware container in the ‘fridge with rutabaga sticks soaking in water, to munch on.

            They say that rutabagas are ‘The Forgotten Vegetable’, but I’ll always remember that summer, and how hydrated I was for three weeks, all thanks to rutabagas.

            During my second honeymoon with rutabagas a couple of years ago, I focused on my slaw recipe. (The secret is the celery seed.)  I also felt that I needed to de-construct the turnip, to which the rutabaga is sometimes unjustly compared.

            First of all, ‘Turnip’ is kind of a closed word. No wonder they call turnips turnips. Now, take the rutabaga. The name’s rhythmic. You could fashion a whole new dance, with just the word ‘rutabaga’. There’s a saying: ‘I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck’. How about- ‘I didn’t just fall off the rutabaga truck’? See how that sounds! ‘Did something turn up in your rutabagas?’ That’s cooler. With ‘Did something turn up in your turnips’, it’s alliterative, yes, but with my ‘rutabaga’ variation, it rewards the knowledge of the hearer; because they know that the rutabaga is far superior to the turnip, and it calls attention to the rightful place rutabagas have in the vegetable world.

            ‘Rutabaga’ is just a nicer word than ‘turnip’. Think of it this way. When you hear names of characters in a movie or something, who do you think ‘Mister Turnip’ would be? Someone bad. Perhaps the villain himself. But, here comes ‘Mister Rutabaga’ to save the day! ‘Mister Rutabaga’ is a stand up man. He means business. And, why do you think they gave these vegetables such names? Names come from somewhere, and people obviously knew long ago that rutabagas were better than turnips, or they wouldn’t have given them such names. In the olden days, they were more in touch with these things. ‘Turnip’ doesn’t sound like something you would eat! It sounds more like a car part.

            “Yeah, Escorts are good, reliable cars, but once the turnip gives out…”

            Turnips are a joke vegetable and they were given a joke name. ‘Nuff said.

            Anyway, at times, I promoted rutabagas at work, and I always brought rutabagasomething to potluck.  There was this new guy, Blaise, who seemed open to being educated about rutabagas, and how they’re compared to and lumped in with the turnip unfairly. Sometimes Blaise would just chuckle and request that the widgets I was passing to him would have the connection to the right, so he could place his part onto the widget quicker. I would comply and tell him all about that rutabagas are a much better vegetable than the turnip. I told him that this is confirmed by the names given, which sprout from the actual thing. Rutabagas are the King of Vegetables. I told him about the speeding flatbed and the spilled rutabagas. Blaise liked the story and asked that I pass the widgets to him in a certain way again. One day while I was addressing the rich background of the rutabaga, I told him that rutabagas deserve grand modes of transportation. Turnips barely deserve a wheelbarrow. I told him that rutabagas deserve to be carried by the boxcar load, at least. They could go over the tracks, making the sound- “Rutabaga-rutabaga-rutabaga…”   

            …Then Blaise told me: “Enough with the rutabagas!”

            !

            That’s how I learned that Blaise is actually pro-turnip, and probably anti-rutabaga to boot. So I decided that I wouldn’t waste my time placing widgets any particular way for him. In fact, I placed them every which way. Anti-rutabaganist.

            In need of allies, I took a Friday off and went to the ‘Turnip Fest’ down in Lyon, which is accessible by taking the 47 bus with my bicycle (The Terminator) latched to the front of the bus, then going solo on the shoulder of the highway down a mile-long stretch of highway 9 between the 47 terminus at Cedar Glen and the metropolis of Lyon itself (population 300.). On the Lyon website, they said they’d include rutabagas in the festivities, so, needless to say, I was motivated.

            ‘Turnip Fest’ was held in a small park next to a convenience store, and was slated to last one day. There were several tables of turnips, some tables with turnip products, like pies and turnip pickles and turnip memorabilia, and a folk band strumming along, and, at the end of the property next to a convenience store dumpster, was an old Chevy truck full of rutabagas. Next to that truck stood a man in denim bib overalls.

            But there wasn’t a sign or anything. I educated the man on the place rutabagas hold in the world, and all he had to say to that was:

            “…and they’re a dollar a pound. Want some?”

            I did. I bought five pounds, which would last me a day or two, and I complemented him on the quality of his rutabagas, although there wasn’t much quality there. I’d seen better at ‘Spendalittle’. Then along came Dave, from Lyon, in a Styrofoam Lyon Turnip costume that I think was first designed, built and used back in ’97. He’d been waving to passing cars on the highway, and now came over to educate us on turnips, although he didn’t even know the difference between a turnip and a rutabaga. He thought that the man’s rutabagas were just very large turnips. Needless to say, he didn’t bring much, but eventually agreed that rutabagas are also a great vegetable. Later I heard that he’d been on Channel 6, though. Right there in the studio! Then on the ten-second news report later that evening, with the Lyon Turnip Fest optics, you’d think it had been ‘Dave In A Turnip Costume Fest’.

            I came out of the experience despondent, and the closest any true rutabaga festival is held is about a thousand miles away, in Vermont.