Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson for October 26, 2010

But Petey is right, Miss Bliss.

Suffering succotash!

A few frightened faces in this bunch.

I gather that Miss Bliss has “heard it all before”; well, she should take heed, then! Succotash is a dreadfully misleading romantical term for mixed corn and beans….

I may never stop laughing at this one …

Well I for one love Lima Beans. I dont remember ever eating succotash…although it sounds delightful.

Even Petey is gonna be right once in a while,

If you don’t chew it, you can’t taste the lima beans. Course if you don’t chew corn——-

Petey’s fame goes far and wide and is long remembered.

Brilliant, Alice! And Petey, too!

You took the words right out of my mouth, JPSteve.

I think Alice is right!

Petey is right. I knew early on that lima beans were the Devil’s side dish. The first time I was served them was when I was still eating in a high chair. My parents thought I loved them since the portions they put on my plate kept disappearing. They found out different at the end of dinner when they poured out my unfinished glass of milk and discovered that I had been dropping the beans into it!

Science facts (ignore if you wish, but at your peril!):

Humans require amino acids to build proteins in our bodies, without which we can die of malnutrition even with full stomachs. Our bodies manufacture some of these amino acids, but there are 14 (if I recall correctly) that we cannot manufacture internally and which must come from our diets.

High protein foods like meat, fish, eggs, and milk, provide all the “essential amino acids” we need, but these foods are often lacking for poor societies.

Until recent advances in bio-engineering, no crop foods provided all of these protein components. Some foods had some, other foods had others, so over the centuries, probably through trial and error, people learned to combine cheap foods to provide the “complete protein” we require.

So this explains American Indian succotash, Italian “pasta e fagioli” (pasta and bean soup), Louisiana “dirty rice”, Asian dishes with rice and tofu or wheat noodles, PB&J sandwiches, all the Mexican dishes mixing beans and corn, and so forth around the world.

(I just saw a newscast on the latest of the Haiti tragedy. One scene showed a little black child with orange hair, a typical sign of protein starvation.)

With the possible exception of brussels sprouts, tree is no better veggie than lima beans. And if you hate brussels sprouts it is a medical fact that you are genetically defective.

Galanti: Why genetically defective? Would you say the same thing about lactose-intolerant people? It’s just the way some people are.

Help I’m lost in an ethanol maize.

I hereby announce Cul De Sac as the best comic of 2010.

I like lima beans .

I have witnessed enough in our family to agree that there has to be something genetic about taste buds.

Our daughter absolutely hates lima beans so I will have to send this toon to her. (I love the baby limas!)

9 spammers flagged already! I hope they get lost in McGoulish’ corn maze.

At the end of thier cold trek through the maze, will they be served steaming bowls of Mc Goulash?