Berenjena

It’s the Spanish word for Eggplant.

As you most likely know, eggplant is a member of the Solanaceae – the nightshade family which also includes tomatoes, potatoes, and peppers. I’m confident that you knew that. Even though we sometimes think of these edibles as vegetables (potatoes are actually stems and hence vegetables), the others are fruits.

Tonight, Susan prepared a basic eggplant parmesan to pair with my sous vide petit, choice, Black Angus boneless ribeye smothered in a Bleu cheese, cream shiitake mushroom sauce. It was yummy. It’s been a while since we had berenjena – one of my mother’s favorite side dishes.

We sat enjoying our steak with mushroom sauce and parmesan eggplant while listening to Rachel Maddow in the background. She started playing a recording of a 2021 Donald Trump deposition in which he justified telling his goons to “beat the crap” out any protestor threatening to throw a tomato or other fruit at him. He made a point to include in his testimony the fact that tomatoes are fruits. So are bananas and pineapples he allowed. Any of them could do grievous harm if hurled at his (fragile) manly person, he claimed.

I think that he had probably been coached about the tomato is a fruit thing, but no matter. He missed the mark on pineapples. I don’t know much about bromeliads (I have at least a couple of friends who do), but the pineapple that we buy at the store is not a classical fruit (an edible ovary with seeds inside). It is something somewhat more complex – a compound fruit consisting of the fusion of multiple ovaries in a geometrical pattern that follows the Fibonacci sequence. I know, it’s a bit esoteric if you were not a high school math nerd. Fret not.

So, Trump was worried about getting hit with tomatoes; I think that is about fear of humiliation rather fear of injury. Being hit by a pineapple is probably a Trump brain fart – one would have to throw a pineapple in the manner that one throws a football, I think – unless one launched it from a trebuchet, in which case it might become a lethal projectile, But, then he should worry that a protestor might launch a Florida alligator from the same trebuchet. Who the hell knows what goes on in the brain of this mental defective?

The steak and eggplant were very tasty. I wish that my Mom had been here to enjoy it with us. I know that she would have laughed at Trump’s deposition.