In praise of parsnips

I travel eagerly the roads of discovery, listening, touching, tasting and seeing, reveling in the joys of being alive.

When I learned by chance that one of the favorite dishes of old Augustus Caesar was parsnips drizzled with honey, I sought out this odd, old-fashioned vegetable and gave his recipe a try.

To this day, I love it. I slice and steam them until they are soft, then drip the honey over them.

How to explain the taste of a parsnip? I find it somewhat similar but superior to the common carrot -- spicier and yet not quite as musky-strong. Do not be put off by its pallid complexion. Certainly don't confuse it with a turnip, which is round, bitter and of a different plant family altogether.

I was excited to discover a recipe for parsnip bread recently. But I was disappointed with the results. The ingredients were quite standard: flour, an egg, oil, salt, cloves, allspice and cinnamon, as well as, of course, two peeled and shredded parsnips.

It also called for a full cup of sugar. I don't care for bread that is "crunchy" with sugar crystals so I halved the amount. If anything, that should have made the resulting dough even less dry than it was. But confronted by a powdery, clumpy pile in the baking bowl, I added about half a cup of milk, nowhere called for in the recipe, until a state of batter was achieved.

The results were still somewhat dry and somewhat flat and quite disappointing. I am sure that good parsnip bread can be made but I will have to find a different recipe.

August meditations

"Then the judges besought the deified Augustus that he would help them fulfill the obligation of their oaths since the intricacy of the case had perplexed them." -- Phaedrus III, 10.

"And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed." -- Luke 2:1.

We are four days into one of the two months of the year (in the West) named for a Caesar of Rome.

In my part of the world, August is blazing hot. Of course, south of the equator, it is wintertime.

I steamed some carrots from the garden this week and drizzled them with honey. Augustus, I am told absolutely loved parsnips, a close cousin of carrots, served that way and ate them by the pound.

Thus in my small way, I commemorated this fascinating man. Not Julius Caesar, who was of course killed quite young, but Augustus, ensured that Rome would become and long remain an empire; that from Romania to Spain, some form of his language, Latin, would be spoken forevermore; that kaisers and czars would pay eponymous tribute to him; and that the laws and even the architecture of Europe would follow the Roman example.