Trends & Season · Food
The Case for the Ugly Vegetable
Somewhere along the way, we decided vegetables should look like their own cartoons — straight, symmetrical, uniformly colored. Most of what grows in the ground never got that memo.
At the market last week, a farmer handed me a carrot that had grown around a stone and split into two legs like a tiny, orange person. It cooked exactly the same as its straighter neighbors, and honestly, tasted better.
A carrot doesn't know it's supposed to be straight. It just knows it's supposed to be a carrot.
Buying the imperfect produce isn't a moral stance so much as a practical one: it's often cheaper, usually fresher, and it tastes like what it is instead of what it's supposed to look like.
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