Consider the lowly broccoli. The broccoli comes from the heart-healthy vegetable group technically known as the “really weird-looking” family of flowering plants. I can speak personally about this weirdness because, having raised the plant for several seasons in my backyard garden, broccoli tends to puts all its energy into stalks the size and consistency of baseball bats. But the florets—the edible parts that remind you of that really bad sci-fi movie where the monster was a giant beach ball painted like a brain—grow so tiny that squirrels perch on electrical lines above and mock them, with a kind of deprecating chittering sound. Nonetheless, when it’s harvest time, I pick them anyway, proudly proclaim, “Look what we grew, honey,” and then throw them immediately into the compost pile.
Setting aside for the moment the enormous personal rewards I experience from growing my own food in the nation’s capital, not all experts agree as to the actual nutritional value of broccoli. On one side of this heated scientific debate there are 10-year-old boys—dressed appropriately in white lab coats—who point out that their experiments with the family dog have shown that, unless the vegetable is deep fried in beef tallow, it is virtually inedible. On the opposite side of the debate, other 10-year-old boys have conducted controlled experiments that reveal that broccoli is very suitable for use as projectiles against passing cars. (Apparently, the stalks make excellent handles.)
Pessimism aside, however, we grown-ups know how good broccoli can be, particularly when ordered from the local Chinese carry-out whose chefs know the proper way to slice them. I have often tried to duplicate this at home, using a traditional Asian cooking cleaver—a birthday gift—but the resulting fingertips in the wok tend not to please invited guests. (Trying to pass them off as extra-firm tofu doesn’t work either.)
Well, I see that’s all the space we have to talk about the wonders of broccoli. Which is too bad, since I have lots more to say on the subject.
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