That’s a good looking broccoli isn’t it? Actually I bought one of those beauties last week. I really like broccoli braised with garlic, a good California olive oil, and a couple of pinches of salt. I just cut off the flowerlets, peeled and sliced that thick stem, pulled out my sauté pan and voilá that’s how to turn good looking broccoli into delicious broccoli.
Being that it’s October, I would have picked up a local broccoli at my Wednesday farmers market. But this is a busy week for me, so I settled for conventional product. Pristine and lovely, not a worm or an aberrant insect to be seen.
Now the reason I know worms love broccoli just as much as I do is I have done battle. You might say we’re in competition for the same delicious stuff. Us humans and the worms I mean.
Anyone who has grown broccoli knows worms can be a problem. And everyone agrees the no one wants to deal with a broccoli crawling with worms. Home gardeners face the same wormy issues as commercial growers. Whether you’re a home gardener committed to pesticide free or a commercial grower committed to efficiency and year round production, you got to do something. A home gardener might choose to check plants for infestation on a regular basis, pluck off any worms, and toss each one in a salt solution. A commercial grower has different options. Conventional growers use pesticides and organic growers use USDA approved non-synthetic pesticides.
With worms being a formidable enemy, however, somebody has to do something. Otherwise the worms would eat all the broccoli before we humans even have a chance.
I used to get romantic about broccoli. But I learned a harsh lesson during that first year I cooked in Garches, a lovely little suburban village on the western side of Paris. And I have looked at broccoli with a realistic eye ever since.
My friend Isabelle has a beautiful house and property in Garches and the first year I cooked there, she had an arrangement with a local gardener. He could grow whatever vegetables he wanted to and sell in return for making the garden available to us. And we ate marvelously well from that garden! Everything except brocolli.
Each day I would just go out and pick whatever I wanted. Broccoli came in that fall and I was there to pick some for supper. But I just picked broccoli once.
Being young and romantic I believed all that was natural was good. Now farmers know that when you grow broccoli, you have to deal with worms. But I grew up in the suburbs so how was I supposed to know?
The broccoli in Isabelle’s vegetable plot was completely natural and completely full of worms. So when I went out that October to get me some, I had my first encounter with what brocolli really looks like in it’s true natural state.
I want you to know I put up a valiant battle. I soaked the broccoli spears in salt and vinegar and the worms starting floating to the surface. But there were just too many. Those worms outnumbered and out gunned me. There were so many I gave up trying. The remains of that broccoli worms and all got dumped out back somewhere behind a bush. I could not look at broccoli again for a long time.
Thankfully my taste for broccoli did return eventually but I lost my romanticism. The best broccoli won’t have a food label because it is sold fresh. And I’m more particular about locally grown than I am about organic versus conventional.
And I say God Bless whatever my farmer needs to so I don’t have to deal with any more worms!
