One more thing to worry about at the grocery

With most vegetables, there's a definite difference in quality from one day to another.  How many times have we declined to buy the cucumbers because they were shriveled, the artichokes because they looked dried out, or the avocados because they had black spots and seemed way too soft?  How many times have we crowed over getting the sweet and beautiful corn, the best tomatoes of the season, the smooth and glossy eggplant?

And then there's parsley.  It just sits there, the same from one month to the next.  Have you ever detected any qualitative difference among the many bunches of parsley you have bought in your lifetime?

I hadn't -- until this week.

We bought a bunch at the farmer's market so I could make tabouli, which I did.  While I was whizzing it around in the Cuisinart I thought it smelled more like grass than like parsley, but I had already soaked the bulgur and so I proceeded with the recipe.

And sure enough, it also tasted more like grass than like parsley.

What a disappointment.  And now I have to worry about something else in my shopping -- sniffing the parsley to make sure it's OK.  Who knew.