Articles & Essays

Also to get out of Iredell County (was the place on fire or something?) one of my grandfathers entered the Marines just before World War I. As far as I can tell, he spent most of his time in the brig for being drunk and disorderly.

Hey, not everyone can be descendants of George Washington. Some of us have to dangle from the more twisted branches of the family tree.

My family's propensity for wacky choices has continued down through the decades. Eventually, it arrived in my own backyard - specifically, in my father's vegetable garden.

Each spring when I was a kid, he would go to the feed store for the traditional tomato plants, bell pepper plants and onion sets. He'd chat for a while with the feed store guys. The topics were tools, baseball and the weather. I believe the old-timey feed store was an important step in the evolution of the man-cave.

Eventually, my father would spy some weird vegetable plant. It was something he had never eaten. It was a vegetable he'd never buy in the grocery store. But it was irresistible, and a plant or three would end up home in a test plot.

Boiled or fried

When I say "weird vegetable," I mean that it was weird by my parents' standards.

My mother was an old-fashioned Southern cook. Vegetables had two primary destinations in her kitchen: Saucepans, where they'd boil (beans) or simmer for hours (turnip greens); or frying pans, where they'd brown in oil after a coating of flour.

Most vegetables that would prefer traveling alternate routes were doomed.

She boiled the first batch of Brussels sprouts. They emitted an odor that would've exterminated termites.

The eggplant completely bewildered her. So she used her default cooking method: Frying. This turned it into greasy sponges. She declared that she didn't know why anyone on Earth would eat that stuff and told my father never to plant it again.

Zucchini got the same treatment, also resulting in banishment.

Some people inherit chiseled chins, willowy builds or heirlooms that give appraisers on "Antiques Roadshow" the vapors. I inherited an attraction to the odd edible. On my father's side.

Let us consume

I've also inherited the poor-choices impulse, which is why I have been drowning in lettuce this spring.

I planted leaf lettuce in pots on my patio last fall. It was so pleasant to stroll out the back door and snip it for my salads that I did it again this spring. And I figured more would be even better. Three large pots worth. Then I joined a community supported agriculture farm that delivered ... lettuce.

I have made salads. And more salads. I have stacked lettuce on every sandwich (doesn't work too well on peanut butter, though). My pots still looked like big Chia Pet bowling balls, and bags of fluffy leafiness ate up the refrigerator space.

I entered on a wonderland exploration of salad dressings. What would happen if I put barbecue sauce in it? Would the salad taste like a 'cue sandwich?

I know - I'll batter and fry it. That's bound to work.