Quarantine Quandiaries
[Where I imagine to be a food columnist, answering questions from helpless and panic readers, during these quarantine times]
Here is part 1 in case you want to check out what kind of questions people were asking back in April, 2020.
I am a huge ramp fan. I mean, who isn’t? Here’s a tough one for you. My friend and I have been arguing over this for weeks. I told her you wouldn’t be able to give a logical answer to this, but she thinks you are more than an advice columnist and you sure know your ramps, leeks, and some logic.
Ok. Here is the question.
I have some ramps and I want to regrow ramps at home on a windowsill. Can you regrow ramps from their bulbs like you can with scallions and leeks? I mean, technically, if a ramp is a wild leek, then what I will be growing will be cultivated and will no longer be wild, so will it still be a ramp?
— Jimmy Tramp, Des Moines, Iowa
Dear Jimmy,
Short answer. Yes.
You can of course plop the bulb end of a ramp in a glass of water and it will re-sprout, at least a wee bit. I have a windowsill victory garden full of bulbs sprouting, including ramps. As for the second part of your question, which is challenging my logical capabilities, I am going to dust off my inner Bertrand Russell and approach this very systematically.
Ready?
R (Ramp exists)
R → V (If something is a ramp, then it’s a vegetable)
V → (W v C) (all vegetables are either wild or cultivated, but not both)
We can thus conclude that:
C → ~R (If a vegetable is cultivated, then it’s not a ramp)
At this point, a few self-evident points we have are:
G (you are growing vegetables in a cup of water set in your windowsill victory garden)
G → C (if a vegetable is grown in a cup of water set in your kitchen window, it’s then cultivated)
And, this means:
V ⊃ ~S (If something is a vegetable, then it will not spontaneously transform into a different kind of vegetable just because it is being regrown in a cup of water set in your kitchen victory windowsill garden)
Q.E.D.
G → ~R
Whatever heck you’re growing aren’t ramps.
By now, you either have a bold proof of the fact that ramps are not ramps, or a compelling evidence that, at least in matters culinary, certain applications of mathematical logic are largely useless.
What should I eat while I’m waiting for apple season to kick in?
— Srinivas Chamarthi, Raleigh, North Carolina
Dear Srinivas,
Sorry to break this to you. But seems like you don’t know much about the secret world of . I mean 🍎. Apples are avaiable all year around at your supermarket. But many of them are not as fresh as you may think. Some of them are probably a year old. They are made to ripen slowly using a controlled atmosphere but they all taste good any time you buy them.
Why would you want to wait till the apple season whenever that is? I have no idea when that is.
How do I deal with having SO MANY DISHES to do all the time, now that I’m eating at home a hundred per cent of the time?
— Chad Washington, Brooklyn, New York
Dear Chad,
Remember this.
“Enjoy taking your time with each dish, being fully aware of the dish, the water, and each movement of your hands. The dishes themselves and that fact that you are here washing them are miracles.”
Just kidding.
This is what the monk and the activist Thich Nhat Hanh says. That’s nice for him. Isn’t it?
For the rest of us, washing dishes is a chore and an irritation sometimes. I don’t like it, and you don’t have to, either.
Most importantly, you don’t need to find it meditative, or creatively stimulating, or as a satisfying task that involves small and lovely pattern of human input with immediate visible output.
You just have to do it.
Whether you’re in the habit of letting them pile up and then plowing through a sinkful at once or you’re an acolyte and the chief pastor of the ‘Holy Church of Clean as You Go OCD’, you’ve just got to snap on some rubber gloves or jump in bare hands, clamp your teeth down on a leather strap, and get them done.
—
Disclaimer: This is a satirical article. All the letters/questions above are not from real people but from fictitious people.
