Today on Food on Fridays we discover the wacky world of purple produce here in Arcata, California.

OK, well, I can’t say for sure that these unusually hued vegetables are particular to Arcata, or even to Northern California. I do recall seeing purple carrots in Santa Barbara, for example, although I don’t seem to have a photo of them, even though I did buy some while we were there to try (they tasted like carrots but looked a little odd as they were purple). Unfortunately, though,  I can’t find any photos I might have taken of them. Ah well.

But down in Santa Barbara, it was just the carrots which were odd colors. Here in Arcata, though,  we have run into a couple of vegetables that are oddly not green, even though you would expect them to be.

First up,  purple broccoli:

Purple Broccoli or Cauliflower

Oddly green-purple cooking water from cooking that purple vegetable

Or maybe that’s purple cauliflower.  The sign said it was broccoli,  but then I asked the guy at the stand last week and he said it was really all colorful cauliflower. It also comes in green — which, when I thought it was broccoli didn’t seem odd, of course.  It comes in other colors, too, including gold:

Golden head of broccoli/cauliflower

The color of the water after cooking this one was just pale, with no green or gold or even yellow overtone.

FWIW,  both kinds tasted like regular white cauliflower. Well, except the purple one maybe tasted a little more like broccoli. Hmm, or maybe not.

Anyway, there was also a purple pepper:

Purple Pepper

It didn’t taste like much of anything, actually, it was crunchy but very bland. Perhaps if Peter Piper picked a peck of purple peppers to pickle, that would add a pinch of pizzazz.

OK, well, maybe not.  But at least it’s not purple prose — just a bit of purple produce for today’s Food on Friday.