Repercussions from the Rutabaga

 

“I can’t believe you said what you did about rutabagas.”

This is my mom after she read my previous blog, “10 Foods that Contain Zero Calories,” in which I made it clear that rutabaga should be banished from all places where humans eat.

“I used to make rutabaga for you in the pressure cooker.”

She says this as if a rutabaga in a pressure cooker will make me see the error in my ways. For me, however, the pressure cooker was the stuff of nightmares. Perfectly good food went in, and a couple hours later, a mushy mass would be deposited on your plate. This was a particular problem when you added rutabaga to the mix. Everything that came out tasted like rutabaga. Even potatoes.

“I like mine mashed,” I would whine.

This was my dad’s cue to grab his fork and smash down the potatoes on my plate and declare them mashed.

“That’s not the same,” I would whine further.

Please keep in mind that these were the days when there was one meal made for the family dinner. No subsitutions or exclusions. Fellow Gen X-ers, you know what’s about to happen here. With a dinner stand-off imminent, my parents would start phase one: the bribe.
“You can be part of the Clean Plate Club!”

I saw through this ploy. I knew the difference between a good club and a bad club. I was a Brownie. As a Brownie, I got to wear a spiffy, little, brown vest, go to meetings with my friends after school, and have a snack while we sat on the floor in a circle doing…well, I don’t really know what we were doing, I just remember it was fun. And if you made it to the next level, “Girl Scouts,” you got cookies! I didn’t realize I would be asked to sell them, I thought I would get to eat them whenever I wanted. That was a good club!

But, the Clean Plate Club? I didn’t know anyone in it, and no one was offering cookies. It seemed to me that the only purpose of this club was so that your mom didn’t have to rinse off your dish before she put it in the dishwasher. Not a club I was interested in.

After a rejection of the bribe, we moved on to phase two: the threat.
“You are going to sit there until you finish your food.”

I remember one time, I sat at that dinner table refusing to eat until bedtime. In the morning, that plate was placed in front of me for breakfast.

She says I am exaggerating, but I swear that actually happened.

“I would cook rutabaga, potatoes, and smoked butt,” she adds.

Smoked butt! She used to make something called, “smoked butt”. I never questioned this when I was younger. It had always gone hand in hand with the rutabaga, and nothing seemed worse than that.

Until now.

“It didn’t strike you as odd that you were making “butt” for dinner?” I ask.
“It was pork,” she says.

Because pig butt makes it better?

I Googled, “smoked butt” and was bombarded with many disturbing FAQs: 

“How long does it take to cook a five pound butt?”
“How long does it take to smoke a Boston butt?”
“Do you smoke butt fat side up or side down?”

Ew. Were people still eating butt???

I decided to get more specific in my query and typed, “What is smoked butt?”

It turns out, anatomically speaking, it is really pork shoulder. It got its name from the barrels that it was put in, which were called butts. How unfortunate.

I texted my sister, “Do you remember having smoked butt for dinner?”
“No,” she texted back. “I was a vegatarian.”

She got away butt-free. But she still had to eat the rutabaga!

 

Me, my mom, and no smoked butt in sight.