Rutabaga Saga

A while back I was sitting with my husband watching tv and I had a sudden thought.

"Hey...have you ever eaten a turnip before?"

"....no..?"

"Me neither. What does it even look like?"

Silence.

So began my fixation on cooking and eating a turnip. I ventured to the grocery store, searching desperately for a turnip which was made even harder by the fact that I hadn't a clue what it looked like. I did, however, find a rutabaga. It looked very unappetizing.  Then when I took a closer look, I noticed that beside the rutabaga label, it said 'turnip' in brackets! I'd found my turnip! I was so excited that it didn't matter how disgusting it looked. I was going to bring that baby home and cook it!

Then I ran into the next issue: how do you cook a rutabaga? It didn't look like you could eat the skin. But it looked like it would be a challenge to peel. I found a nice little How To on the internet and away I went peeling the vegetable. But then when it came time to cut it, I found that my lack of strength and measly little blunt knife literally just didn't cut it. I had to enlist the help of my husband.

After much huffing and puffing, we finally have little bits of rutabaga. I plopped the pieces into a large pot of boiling water and waited. There was a lot of rutabaga. The pot was practically overflowing with rutabaga. Rutabaga! Very fun to say, less fun to deal with. Now I understand why that word is chosen as a replacement swear word when people are feeling silly.

Anyways, I seasoned it with lots of butter, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, brown sugar. You know, all the stuff that makes butternut squash incredible. Then came the moment of truth. The moment we'd all been waiting for.

We sat there in silence, just chewing. There were a lot of awkward comments like, "Is there enough butter?" and "It's like potatoes, but very, very different."

Finally we broke down. It was not worth the charade. It was awful. Rutabaga looks gross, smells sickening and tastes like brussel sprouts. Then I glanced over at the pot on the stove. It was FULL of rutabaga. I have a great amount of difficulty with throwing food away. I get angry when the cheese isn't covered well enough and so it gets all stiff and dry. But ya know what? I still eat it! But this...I just couldn't get around it. I was going to have to throw it away.

I tried to pretend like I wasn't going to do it by putting it in a tupperware container and leaving it in the fridge for a while. But after a few days, I couldn't fool myself. No one in their right minds would ever eat that rutabaga. I had to throw it out.

And so ends my rutabaga saga. Rutabaga Saga. How could something sound so delightful but taste so indigestible? May I never again get the urge to try something new.