Go ahead, thank me with vegetables

When I was growing up, we had a pretty mundane list of vegetables that we would eat: corn (usually canned), carrots, POTATOES, peas (usually canned), beans (usually canned), beets (always canned), iceberg lettuce, cucumbers, the occasional radish (if we were being fancy), a little bit of cabbage in the forms of cole slaw or cabbage rolls, onions, celery, zucchini, spinach (only if it went in a cream-based dip, so yummy), a bit of broccoli, the occasional green pepper in my teen years, and maybe something else that I've forgotten about.

It's not a small list, by any means. But lately I've been slowly adding things to it: sweet potatoes (amazing as fries), spinach (a key ingredient in salads), leeks, artichokes, butternut squash (great in soups and baked with apples and cranberries), eggplant, kale, turnip, kohlrabi, and now fennel.

My friend Bina actually got me to try fennel (a.k.a. anise). I'd heard it tasted like licorice, which I find foul-tasting, so I'd been avoiding it. But she convinced me to try it, and even supplied, with typical Italian generosity, a wedge of a raw bulb for me to sample. And it did have a licorice flavour, but it was also crunchy and smooth and refreshing. I liked it! I even bought myself some a couple of weeks ago. It's so easy to prepare; just rinse and chop the bulb into finger-food pieces. It's reportedly good for one's digestion; apparently Italians commonly finish off their large meals with a piece of fennel.

So now I'm a fan of fennel.

So much so, that, after doing Bina something of a favour, I joked that she could pay me back in fennel.

So what did I receive today? Lo and behold:

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