The Colour of Cabbage

The cabbage (Brassica oleracea Capitata Group) is a plant of the FamilyBrassicaceae (or Cruciferae). It is herbaceous, biennial, and a dicotyledonous flowering plant with leaves forming a characteristic compact cluster.

Apparently, this just like the above according to wikipedia, Cato the Elder liked cabbage about as much as he disliked Carthage. A versatile vegetable, cabbage is used in various idiomatic ways - according to OED it is just as valid as a term of endearment ("my cabbage") as an insult ("cabbage-head"). American slang, at least in the 60s, used cabbage to denote money. And as a verb it has connotations of shaping head, or adding something to something else in layers - just like the vegetable. In general, however, cabbage as an idiomatic expression seems to be used in a derogatory way; just as it is more famous for smelling a bit funny and provoking flatulence than being a useful and tasty vegetable. Surely it is this undeserved bad reputation that has provoked the resistance activities of the cabbage society which can be found on the link here. They even have a cabbage converter for those who feel that life as a vegetable might be more rewarding. I tried it. And I think I'll stick to cooking cabbage. [http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Plains/2144/]

While being a very versatile sort of vegetable, it is also one that tends to be used in special ways and for special occasions. At least here in Sweden. Its varieties have firm connotations in my head in a way which few vegetables can claim. The generic "cabbage" as part of the generic "veg" which accompanies any meal I first encountered in Ireland. I had not been in the country for long when I was introduced to the concept of carvery lunch, a concept which for some reason I will always associate with The Duke pub on Duke street. At that time it was quite good value - loads of food, not very expensive. And cabbage, cooked in a way I could not remember having in Sweden. Compared with the over-cooked carrots and in general over-cooked vegetables the cabbage became one of my favourite vegetables on offer.

Red cabbage will always be connected with Germany in my head. Whether made expertly by my grandmother or in a restaurant it is always tastier there than anywhere else. Germans don't overcook vegetables like, say, the English do, but they don't leave them alone either. At my grandparents 60th (!!) wedding anniversary we were treated to a big party in a country inn. Lots of food, various kinds of meat, potatoes... you name it. Great veg too, but the effort they had put into making it more interesting - bacon around the haricot verts, parsley and butter with the peas, honey with the carrots... - was astounding. Needless to say, the red cabbage was spectacular. Heavens only know what they had done with it.

Sauerkraut, funnily enough, I do not associate with Germany. Not any more, that is. A few years ago I was staying with my friends in Värmland. I had been looking after the children while they were in town and when they came back they brought with them not only the shopping, but also new friends. A young couple of the true hippie variety and their tiny little baby. We took them in for the night and fed them and had a lovely evening. They were vegetarians, of course, and very health conscious - and had taken on board the idea that homemade sauerkraut is very healthy (which I'm sure it is). So at the dinner table they produced a huge jar - remember, they were travelling with backpacks and a pram - of this stuff. And had it with whatever else we put on the table. As did we, of course, only polite.

Brown cabbage is Christmas, of course. Classic Swedish Christmas vegetable (I think) and as such my conscientious father put it on the table. I actually like it, even if I rarely got that far into the Christmas meal - never was I so unable to eat as Christmas eve. Perhaps it was the sheer amount of available stuff. Perhaps the smells ensured a feeling of fulness even before the meal had commenced. Nice it was, anyhow.

The smells of cabbage are perhaps never so clear as when white cabbage is being boiled. Again my father's cooking springs to mind. He used to try to boil it without the smell spreading all around the house (and succeeded as far as I can remember) and then made it creamed, with a white sauce. With it usually came bacon and boiled potatoes, neither of which was very inspiring to me, but the creamed white cabbage was lovely.

Green cabbage has two connotations, which are very different and can coexist, each in their own time and space. Beginning with the first, we are back in Germany and my grandmother's green cabbage soup. It was green, looked like a swamp and had, bizarrely, big sausages floating in it which had to be fished out. Sounds nasty? Well, it wasn't - it was incredibly nice. And those sausages were one of the few aspects of being a carnivore which I've never stopped missing. The second green cabbage connotation is a more recent one. As a student I worked at one of the student "nations" in Lund. The nations were originally the houses which out-of-town students lived in, grouped after where they came from. Traditions evolved, and there would be communal activities of various kinds. Then the university expanded. A lot. Now the houses are huge, people can belong to whichever one, and not everyone lives there. Not even the majority do. Activities include things like choirs, football teams, cafés, fancy dinners, and organising a weekly pub and nightclub. Students work, without pay, but in exchange for other benefits, with all these things. As did I. Those of us who were in charge of certain areas of the whole enterprise had more parties, trips and get-togethers than the others - including a Christmas party. As I belonged to the nation of Halland, a county just north of this one, we had Christmas food traditional there. Including, and this is where we get back to cabbage, the traditional way of making green cabbage - for Christmas of otherwise. Its creamy and very nice. And will, from now on, always remind me of my crazy student days at Halland's Nation.

Brussel sprouts, which are a form of cabbage, of course, I hate. With a passion. Always have. Always will. Enough said.

Finally, Savoy cabbage I claim as my own. I cooked it and put it in a potato-bake when I was in Newcastle - and it turned out very well. Fresh Savoy cabbage has potential. And among all the varieties of cabbage which are firmly of someone else's invention and with strong connotations, it is nice to have a cabbage of one's own.

Elizabeth Bowen

I suppose this entry could have been placed in my literature blog, it does, after all, concern a writer. A writer, furthermore, which I am currently engaging with using all my available learning. But the inspiration for this text, my thoughts, are about my relationship with this person, who, right now, is a very strong presence in my life.

Apart from watching football, reading news, going to the gym and seeing the odd friend here and there my life right now is taken up by my academic endeavours. And it strikes me how close a relationship I am forming with the woman whose texts I have decided to make my study. Well, not the actual woman, of course, she died 6 years before I was born. Rather my own idea about her, the persona of Elizabeth Bowen which emerges for me through her texts. I've read most of her fiction, her essays, prefaces and a few letters and without really noticing the process I feel as though I know her voice. Know, even, what she would think about certain things and feel gratified when a new text confirms this. This is of course nonsense, I am only conversing with myself and my ideas about someone who might as well be fictional for all I am able to know. Surely we can never "get to know" the dead by reading their texts?

Somehow, though, I think we do form relationships with people that we study; it seems to be a part of human behaviour to form relationships with all kinds of things apart from other human beings. Pets, objects, football teams... all take on a significance of their own, we invest them with importance and they ARE important, because they are important to us. Their characteristics interact with our feelings for them and relationships are formed. As a student or researcher of literature, this becomes an inevitable outcome of the close examination of someone else's texts and contexts. To be able to sustain one's work and enthusiasm about it maybe it is necessary to have a good relationship with one's chosen object of study. By good I don't necessarily mean a loving one, battling can undoubtedly be fruitful too. I personally, however, need to love and respect the person I am devoting myself too and I find in Elizabeth Bowen a writer with whom I could continue to work for many years yet without getting bored or frustrated.

Bowen herself explored the ghostly nature of texts, people, the past and memory; how the fictional can be as real as the actual, and how our senses of self and our senses of each other are subjective and complicated. Her wisdom in these matters is something that I find myself respecting, just as I respect and love to study how she treated all these subjects in her fiction. Examining Elizabeth Bowen’s writing has given me much food for thought about literature itself and why and how we interact with it.

The work that I am doing now, of which a dissertation on Bowen is to be the outcome, began with Henry James, on the back of a longer involvement with Virginia Woolf. Fascinated by their fiction I also studied some of their other writing. And while they will never cease to amaze me, for all kinds of reasons, I never felt a connection, never felt that I wanted to throw my lot in with either of them for a longer period of time. At times, they even annoyed me a little. Elizabeth and I will have our disagreements, inevitably, but I feel that this is but the beginning of a beautiful friendship.