Just reading a (published) book where people might 'run away as quickly as boiled asparagus.' It did stop me cold for a period of head-scratching. I thought it was the strangest comparison ever ...then I sort of 'got' it.
Well thanks for that. I head-scratched for longer than a period and then took to Google. Where now, after learning a line of latin, only too 'sort of get it'. Sooner than Sparage can be sodden can't be said for my speed on the uptake!
Boiled asparagus is blaspheme. Frying pan and butter is the way to go. Or raw. Raw asparagus is quite good.
There used to be a show on Discovery (or NatGeo, or TLC, or Foodies, or....) called something like "The Science of Food". One episode went through how to best cook various vegetables and the science of why. Apparently, asparagus, has some flavorful chemical in it that breaks down in water, while one of the other vile, not fit to be fed to rabbits, horrid horrid why do you hate me so much, Mother greens has the same problem with oils, and should never be fried, always steamed or boiled. IMHO, however, while they might be okay as a side, fundamentally, vegetables are what food eats.
There's some sausages, a couple of Japanese green (non-spicy) peppers, two shiitake mushrooms, an onion slice, and your melon is actually Japanese kabocha pumpkin. Ah, and kimchi in the top right.
I like mine grilled with a drizzle of balsamic reduction or steamed lightly with some hollandaise on top. YUM I can't tell you how many vegetables I grew up hating as a child because the only way I was exposed to them was canned or boiled to death. Asparagus, brussel sprouts, cabbage, beets...love 'em all now.
My headscratch thought the sentence was missing something, something like - run as quick as someone trying to escape the scent of boiled asparagus.
Yeah, I thought there was a word missing, and that the sentence should have read "run away as quickly as from boiled asparagus".
Me neither. Was Augustus routinely chased by boiled asparagus? Did ancient Rome have faster and more dangerous asparagus than we do in modern times? Will someone who gets this enlighten those of us who are culinarily challenged?
I remember reading, in one of my books about food, that there was an ancient Roman saying that translated to, "Do that in less time than it takes to cook asparagus." I could kinda sorta see that, if it were a very common saying, slowly transmogrifying into sayings that suggest that asparagus itself is fast.
I quite enjoyed that comparison thought it's quirky! Not sure I "get" it per se - certainly I don't get how it's supposed to come across. However, in my mind, I promptly and happily imagined two pieces of animated asparagus literally running away on their stalks, like leaping out of the boiling water 'tis not an image I'd forget any time soon! What was the context when this was used? Are you sure it wasn't supposed to be funny? I didn't think there were any missing words in the line at all - just took asparagus as metaphor.
No, there wasn't any subtext, which is what made it so bizarre. However, apparently it is a Roman-coined comparison, so its usage makes sense from a research point of view. I, too, got the image of asparagus running ...but then realised what it meant was that somebody might run away as fast as asparagus gets overcooked in boiling water. Not the literal time, of course, but the idea that it happens a lot quicker than you'd expect.
Yes, that's what I thought it might have meant, but I prefer my version of running vegetables much more amusing! Otherwise the phrase becomes rather... bland.
I take it you are referring to, Morituri te Salutant: Those who are about to die, greet you, (not to suggest I was familiar with it, found with a quick search). Sounds to me like a nice example of how creative we can be with similes. And it might catch the readers attention at the same time.