Brocialist (part 2)

If you are reading this hoping to find out more about the insult that journo-twitterati feminists are throwing around then you are going to be disappointed. Today's definition of the word Brocialist is for the people who were disappointed with the formal definition.

I have had my allotment for sixteen years and in that time I've become something of a bocialist.  I've grown white sprouting, purple sprouting and various varieties of calabrese.  I've grown brokoli and romanesco, which looks like green cauliflower.

I've sown seeds in pots and trays on the windowsill, sown them directly into the soil (not very successfully) and even made containers for them out of newspaper.

I've lost whole crops to green or striped caterpillars or pigeons.

Broccoli has never been one of the foods that I've had to get creative with.  I have hidden it in soup but unlike the courgette which can be peeled, grated and hidden in everything from cake to bolognese to fool even the pickiest eaters I have never been able to get broccoli past my daughter without her tasting it.  Luckily, I've never grown more of it than I can use.

I have given it away, though.  I am generous with the  produce from my allotment.  Purple sprouting broccoli is the best.  It's the only vegetable you can eat in March.  Everything else has finished and most of the plot is being dug over for the new season but good old purple sprouting keeps going, not taking up too much space and it looks like flowers.  Once, in the days when I was younger and more sociable I was going out for a friends birthday and I decided to take her a big bunch of purple sprouting broccoli tied with a lilac bow as a present.  I know it sounds a bit weird but my friends loved my allotment gifts.  My rude Christmas parsnips were always a talking point in the pub on Christmas Eve.  My friend was thrilled.
"Ohh, it's soooo pretty," she cooed grabbing me around the neck and breathing white wine spritzer fumes all over me, "No one has ever given me such a wonderful gift."
She put the bunch carefully in her Givenchy bag that her boyfriend had bought her.

A few weeks later she confessed that she had got so drunk that night that she had forgotten about the broccoli and found a slimy rotten mess at the bottom of her lovely new designer bag when she went to use it again on the following weekend.