What are vegetables good for, besides eating?
Some gardens are bursting right about now with zucchini, green beans, summer squash, cucumbers, yellow squash, kale, rhubarb, patty pan squash, lettuce, have I mentioned squash?
Here in northern California, growing squash is easy and so abundant that we don’t leave our car doors unlocked, or we might find a bushel of zucchini on the seat.
Write about other things that vegetables can do.
Inspired from Adair Lara‘s writing workshop.
Write about new uses for vegetables.
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justinefos
I am asked, what are vegetables for except for eating.
This is something I have never even wondered about, let alone asked before….they could be dried and hung in ornamental wreaths. Hang them around your house as one does Christmas lights, or hang them on the Christmas lights wires. Make soap with them. Grind them up and make candles with their grounds. Dry them, then hand-sew them together into quilt-like hangings. If you have a lot of dried vegetables around, no one would have to worry about starvation! (I know, this goes back to eating them!)
mcullen Post author
What a fun response, justinefos. Your alternatives for what to do with vegetables are very creative. Hmmm. . . thinking about drying them, I wonder if they could be made into gum. Or, like those little food pellets in Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factgory, where Violet ate a whole meal of little food pills. Wonka tried to warn her they weren’t ready to be eaten, just before she swelled up into a giant blueberry.
mcullen Post author
I took a writing class with Adair Lara during the summer of 2009. It was fun driving to her home in San Francisco anticipating what assignments we would be given and what we would learn. Returning home just after sunset, satiated with a delicious writing experience amongst talented and ready-to-learn students.
One of our assignments was “Images, using sensory detail.”
Here is my freewrite that bubbled up from this assignment.
Interesting Things Kids Do With Vegetables
I struggled with the images writing assignment. What does it mean? How do I do it?
I decided to just do it.
I sat at my computer, contemplating this assignment while my son and his girlfriend watched TV a few feet away.
“Crunch . . . Crunch . . . CrunchCrunchCrunch.”
“What are you eating?”
“Pretzels.”
Yes! The crunch of mini-pretzels.
“Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr . . . ”
Aha! The drone of a neighbor’s lawn mower.
My son asked me what I was doing. I explained about using the senses in images.
“Yow. . . . ” I practically jumped out of my chair.
Something extremely cold on the back of my neck caused me to whirl around in my swivel chair.
He laughed, “I knew your reaction would be great.” He was holding an icy cold yellow squash.
After the initial shock, it was quite refreshing on that sweltering day.
His girlfriend called out, “Sliced cucumbers in water.”
More about using senses in imagery in Prompt #280.