The Cabbage

When Adam asked God, What is beauty? God extended his hand and said, Behold, my son. Upon His palm danced swirls of gaseous purples, reds, greens, and ribbons of white. As each colour separated itself from the others, it became entangled in the ribbons until several orbs were formed, each more wondrous than the last. God delicately placed the orbs upon the ground and wrapped them in leaves of the gentlest green so that they might be protected from harm.

Here is a picture of an arrangement of cabbages on display in
Vienna. They are so beautiful that only a monster could eat them.

God directed Adam to look upon these--His most perfect creations--whenever Adam might question the infinite grace of his maker. But he was not to eat them, because to eat them would be to destroy beauty. For seven days and seven nights, Adam gazed upon the magnificent spheres, unable to avert his eyes from such radiant beauty. But as Adam’s admiration for the cabbages grew, so did his discontent with his own physical form. He reasoned that if he were to ingest the cabbages, he too would become as beautiful as they were.

After gobbling up the last of the cabbages, Adam muttered, Das gut! No sooner than the words had escaped his lips, his belly began to bloat and ache: the dance that had formed the beauteous spheres was now being undone inside himself. He felt the colours pull apart, swelling and swirling as they danced themselves back to their gaseous state.

And for seven more days and seven more nights, Adam was in the throes of agony, writhing in pain and trying to expel all of the heinous gas from his delicate human system. The only thing more horrible than the painful bloating of his digestive tract was the intense shame he now felt in front of Eve; an emotion that had hitherto never been experienced before by man.

As was his custom, God doled out punishment for man’s insolent and disobedient consumption of food that ought not be consumed: Thou shalt feel shame and the burn of crimson upon thine cheek for all thine bodily functions in the company of thine partner.

Cabbage angels.

And that is why you should never eat a cabbage: beautiful to behold, but deadly to ingest. Well, that and because it tastes and smells like the effects that it will inevitably have on your body. (An exception can be made for borscht, but that will be covered in an up-coming post.)

And for anyone interested in my thoughts on sauerkraut, here’s a query: How do you make a bad thing worse?

Answer: Ferment it.

If considering the consumption of a cabbage,

Remember this, a timeless French adage:

'Mange-le si tu veux

Mais tu ne seras plus mon chou-chou.'*

That is to say: lucky in cabbage, unlucky in love.

*French authorities have insisted that “veux” and “chou” do not, in fact, rhyme. But I maintain that eux is an impossible sound and can only be pronounced in the exact same way as ou.