I just ate my first raw parsnip. I'd bought two at the grocery store a few days ago, and had cut up some parsnip to put in with my morning breakfast stirfry earlier today. Verdict?

Magnificent! Almost as sweet as ginger, almost as tangy. Surprisingly tasty.

A relative of the carrot, it has none of the carrot's blandness. And, I read, it has some important nutritious advantages over the carrot. Far more potassium, for instance. And it is obvious, on crunching it in the mouth, it has plenty of fiber.

So why does it have so little a part in today's diet? The potato usurped its place. It was once an extremely important part of the diet of Europeans. But the potato got transplanted from the New World, and the rest is history.

I'll be using the parsnip quite a bit in the future, I believe. In soups. Curry dishes. With ginger, without. A simple source of pleasure and nutrition, perfect for an Epicurean diet.

But it looks like the wild parsnip (common, I think, hereabouts) can easily be mistaken for hemlock, the poisonous plant. I'd rather eat Epicurean than Socratic.

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