As a vegetarian and general healthy person, I once claimed that I never met a vegetable I didn’t like. Even the most difficult vegetables, like broccoli rabe, I started to crave new ways I could eat. Then came the day when I made a medley of roots stew. See, I knew that my fellow eaters preferred potatoes and parsnips, so I made the soup chunky and then scooped out most of those vegetables into their puree. I left the bulk of the turnips and rutabagas for myself. Of course, they would not palate a pureed white slurry as a meal so I fried up some sausages for them to accompany the hearty winter fare. As a vegetarian, I thought I could stomach rest of the mostly turnip stew alone.

That day, as luck would have it, we were left with some scrawny boiler potatoes, skinny parsnips, and a mammoth turnip. The rutabagas were reasonable. Always more conscious of the opinions of more picky people, I salted and pureed my guests’ soup appropriately. Mine I left a little more chunky, because I tend to like vegetable identification in a meal, and though the stew never impressed me, I added touches of salt and pepper, a desperate pat of butter along the way hoping to make it better.

I had learned to like things like horseradish, cabbage, and mustard greens this way, forcing it down and finding a craving for it later in life. Besides, waste not want not, so I choked it down until the bowl emptied.

That night my toothbrush seemed ineffective. The taste of turnip lingered. I lay in bed and bubbles of turnip returned; sleep eluded me. All during the next day, my stomach churned turnip, a taste unnatural, like I downed some solvent, turpentine, peroxide, something caustic corroding my insides. The following day, I knew I had done something permanent to my digestive system. No meal since had managed to erase that taste. My cereal bowl with flakes and bananas had a tinge of turnip. It showed up again on my pasta plate. For nearly two weeks something in the center of my intestines emitted an astringent that stung in the middle of my gut.

It gradually subsided, and though every now and then I give them a chance when well mingled with other more palatable tubers, I have yet to overcome the taste of too much turnips.