Dear broccoli, I don’t like your new look

Dear broccoli

I’m sorry we haven’t been together for a while. We used to hang out so often.

I do still like you, honest I do. Some of my happier dinners have been with you.

Remember when we discovered how good you were stir-fried, fiery-hot with chilli? Or the revelation of roasting you in olive oil with salt and pepper? Remember the broccoli-cheese “soup” in America, which was less soup, more cheese sauce, flecked with your vibrant green wholesomeness, a nod to nourishment?

So yes, it’s not you: it’s the way you now dress. When did you make the leap from your natural state into the most toxic, nonrecyclable, nonbiodegradable, synthetic packaging on the planet?

Why, oh, why have you sold out to The Man, to the artificial, to so many polystyrene trays and plastic coveralls? Were you always like this? Did you change, or was it me? Because you are perfect when unadorned; you do not need shrink-wrapping and polymers to enhance your attraction.

Indeed, these artificial garments render you unlovely, unlovable. I no longer see you, or your friends, in the fresh produce aisle: the cauliflowers, cabbages, aubergines, lettuce heads and garlic.

Instead, I see turtles with single-use straws up their noses, garbage gyres swirling in the ocean and inert, sweating mountains of plastic being cursed from the future, as my children’s children’s children contemplate their trash inheritance, just because I fancied a bit of broccoli with my fish fingers in 2019.

You do not need these things; the world does not need these things. You’re so much better than this; lovely just as you are.

So, why then? Is it a twisted desire for protection, a wish to be untouched by those who would purchase you, take you home, consume you?

Did you forget that when I get you to my kitchen I’ll wash and cook you, and thus kill any inadvertent nasties that might have made their way into your florets?

However, there’s nothing I can do about the blatant nasties, all these plastics you now bring.

Nothing? Nothing except to say no, I’m not buying into your rubbish.

But I hope we’ll meet again, soon, in the loose produce aisle.

Sincerely, Jennie

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