I cannot recapture the precise points that I found so hilarious. The thing that I'm reading is intellectual but it's sprinkled with childlike derogative adjectives. I read it wrong to begin with "Alexandria Donkey-Chompers snake-pit head" had me laughing so hard that I couldn't stop, but it is actually "in Donkey-Chompers snake-pit head" saying cauliflower is culturally inappropriate. Its origin is India and other similar exotic places. Therefore inappropriate for us to grow.
Truly idiotic. We can grow whatever we want to grow. Whatever we can grow. Just shut up.
If Donkey-Chompers was sitting here with me and if we were discussing her ideas for our food then I'd reverse her theory to illustrate American plants, New World plants, introduced to Europe and Asia and Africa, that by way of terroir and by processing methods became identified with foreign nations, San Marzano tomatoes, Hungarian paprika, Madagascar vanilla, Swiss chocolate, Irish potatoes, for examples. Squashes, zucchini or aubergines whatever you choose to call them, pumpkins, melons, corn would all be off limits to Europeans, Asians and Australians.
The list of New World plants is gloriously long.
The cauliflower videos are not very good. I want to see American farmers because we're the best. This one is short and you can safely skip the first minute without missing anything useful and her blithe superficial recapitulation contains certain errors.
Cauliflower really is cultivated elsewhere more than it is cultivated in the U.S.
Their videos are even more difficult to watch. The narration is grating, the methods backwards. A woman flings dry poo from a large bowl to cover a field then a tiny tractor tills it in. The steps are over-explained.
All the videos are terrible. All these fer'ners all over the place. The American videos show small production and unusual characters explaining their challenges.
Top 5 cauliflower producing countries.
1) China 8M tons
2) India 5 M tons
3) Spain .45M tons
4) Italy .41M tons
5) France .38 M tons
Wikipedia shows a different list.
1) China 10.2 M tonnes
2) India 8.2 M tonnes
3) United States 1.3 M tonnes
4) Spain .6 M tonnes
5) Mexico .6 M tonnes
6) Italy .4 M tonnes.
I learned: if you don't close up the head with the leaves then the sun turns the head yellow. That sun-yellowing makes cauliflower unsellable. They're discarded. There is a great deal of wasted production.
While contrarily, seeds for yellow type are much more expensive than seeds for the white type.
But those yellow types make your cauliflower display outstanding, and they sell very well.
So what we have is a contradiction right there. Is yellow undesirable or not?
I find them desirable. It makes me want to buy them.
Apparently, it's a different kind of yellow. Sun-yellowing of white type is bad, while genetically pure yellow is good.
And seeds for the purple and green types are less expensive than for the yellow type.
Roasted cauliflower really is good. You can eat a whole head for a meal.
12 comments:
"1493" by Charles Mann is a must-read to understand the (literal, in some cases) cross-pollination that began after new and old world people found each other and started sharing plant (and other) knowledge. Absolutely fascinating but must be intellectually mature and honest. No chapters on how white-colored veggies are a racist, colonialist plot to undermine/oppress Persons Of Color/brownandblackbodies.
Cauliflower is delicious when covered in cheese or some other sauce. It really is a delivery-system food (it delivers other food).
Oh, I didn't realize it's the white color that Donkey-Chompers objected to. I never read anything she actually said. I just read things other people said about her. I thought her complaint was cultural appropriation.
I think I intuited that part but it does make Ocasiosense.
My understanding was that she objected to cauliflower because it represented colonialism. The vegetable is coincidently white. She wants to replace "European" crops and garden varietals with the types of foodstuffs that her people prefer -- you know, the chosen ones who have the inalienable right to migrate here. She was stupid enough to suggest a plant -- yucca -- which will not likely thrive here as well as it does in shithole countries. The whole kerfuffle is a about population and not just plants. She is one angry and determined piece of work.
What say you, Chip -- the one with the evergreen thumbs. Can we grow large amounts of yucca where we now grow cauliflower?
Always liked cauliflower.
(I know, weird)
A lot of those New World plants saved a great many Euros from starvation. In return, the best of them came here.
A lot of black, Hispanic, and American Indians live past 35 because of colonialism.
Cauliflower is nummy. You can take in in all sorts of directions. Blackened in the oven with curry, sliced almonds and raisins. nummy nummy nummy.
Imma go with my intuition on this one. I saw the video. It was done on the spur of the moment and she had to come up with a vegetable that was supposedly [absurdly, but that just adds to my theory] unfriendly to people of color. Because people of color only like vegetables of color? That seems to be the working hypothesis from our resident socialist junior genius: People OF COLOR are not comfortable with certain vegetables and the example that dingdong comes up with is cauliflower. And I’ve eaten cauliflower - mainly in casserole format - at plenty of POC tables. So the only explanation that makes sense - Ocasiosense - is that she thought of cauliflower as a Caucasian vegetable. Because stupid.
I think okra is African. Came over with slaves. And now it grows all over the south.
I like cauliflower mashed.
Is the Romanesque (the pale green one that looks like fractals) a broccoli or cauliflower? I know they are closely related, is it a cross?
Amartel: You are so right about flavor delivery system. Cauliflower is better for you than pasta (with is basically the same thing).
Evi L. Bloggerlady said...Is the Romanesque (the pale green one that looks like fractals) a broccoli or cauliflower? I know they are closely related, is it a cross?
I don't know if they're a cross but they're both cross-bearing vegetables: cruciferous vegetables. ;)
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