16 August 2012
There's an old saying where I come from.
'Don't put your turnips all in one stew'.
It's meaning comes from an old English folk tale. Lucky you, I am about to retell this famous yarn.
An old woman lived in a house. That was quite common at the time. Not only did old women live in houses so did young women, unless they were homeless. In that situation they lived in shop doorways and Biffa bins.
This old woman was expecting her family over for an evening meal. That very day she had been out shopping for ingredients for the feast she was to bestow upon her guests that evening.
She went down the vegetable aisle and from the corner of her eye as she passed the carrots, she noticed a potato on the floor. Just one. It was her plan to buy a handfull of potatoes however this potato on the floor was quite off putting. She thought that there was a possibility that any of the potatos she picked from the plethora of potatos that were in a bag on the shelf could have been on the floor at some point or other. She did not want to serve rotting old floor potatoes to her guests. She now had a dilema. Without potatoes she could not feed her family. In a moment of panic she ran down the aisle, arms flailing, screaming obscenities at random shoppers.
"The potatoes are tarnished. The potatoes are tarnished. God damn it the potatoes are tarnished".
The onlookers were distraught, for they too were there to shop for potatoes. However as she reached the bottom of the aisle she noticed a full shelf of a foreign vegetable she had no recollection of seeing before in her massively overlong lifetime. She looked at the sign and it read ..... 'Turnips'
"Hmm" she thought "These things look like potatoes but are considerably bigger, these shalt do for the meal" and so she bought ten of them.
Authors note: the amount of turnips purchased is still being debated in academic circles, however the general consensus is that between ten and eleven were bought with some estimates being in the region of ten and a three quarters.
She went home having paid for these exotic vegetables. She made sure of it. She had witnessed a one eyed old lady with scruffy shoes being arrested for potato theft as she approached the checkout. When she got home she prepared the turnips. She was pleased and took pride with her meal she had prepared, a turnip stew. Finally her family arrived and immediately sat at the table and awaited their promised meal. The old woman served up. Her family sat in awe. They immediately understood and recognised that they were about to partake in stew. They were devastated to say the least. They made sure that the old woman was made aware of their displeasure. The old woman sobbed.
"Why are you so displeased?" she asked.
Her nephew stood up and threw down his bowl in disgust and said...
"Old woman, no one has eaten a turnip since before potatoes were introduced to these shores in the 16th century by that great sea explorer person, Sir Walter Raleigh, you mock us with you poor choice of vegetables"
It's needless to say, the meal went unfinished.
So this concludes the story of how 'Don't put your turnips all in one stew' became a popular saying.
Ancient Wisdom What Was Learned. • Opuss № I