#1040 Rutabaga Riffin’

The other day, when I wrote a commentary about the demise of polka, I joked about rutabaga harvesting in the upper Midwest, and I had no idea what a rutabaga actually was.
But amazingly, I was right, they are grown in colder climes. They are a form of turnip. In Europe, they call them the Swedish turnip or just a swede.
“Swede” probably wouldn’t go so well around here. It seems like whatever the southwest Washington small town, from Oakville to Pe Ell to Lebam, there’s at least one guy named Swede. And judging by the ones I’ve met, not many of them would like being called a turnip.
Not that rutabaga would be an improvement.
Before pumpkins made it to the Scotland, rutabagas were carved out to make jack-o-lanterns, the traditional symbol of damned souls. There’s a culinary recommendation right there. Yeah, I’ll have the haggis, and a side of damned souls.
The soubriquet swede comes from the fact that the swede, or rutabaga, or yellow turnip, comes for the northern lands of Sweden and Finland. One day when some industrious farmer-inventor was tired of raking snow, he crossed two hardy vegetables, the cabbage and the regular turnip.
Oh boy. Yum. Let’s take two vegetables that already possess an acrid and nearly unpalatable taste and cross them for true perfection. Not as bad as Germany I suppose, who decided cooked cabbage alone didn’t stink up a kitchen enough, so they invented sauerkraut.
For the culinary courageous, the leaves of the rutabaga plant can also be eaten as a fresh vegetable. Yum again.
Strangely “rutabaga” has never achieved the status of being a good insult, although it’s a fun word to say. People can be dumb as a potato or be ill-tempered lemon-pusses but you never hear of someone being as stupid as a rutabaga.
Similarly, even though bananas have made it into popular songs like banana-bana-bo-bana, rutabagas have been neglected.
You don’t even see it in jokes. It’s like everyone just wants to turn up their noses at the whole thing. So how about this?
If you’re an Italian-American, why is an aggressive panhandler like a turnip? He’s a rude-a-begga...
America, ya gotta love it.