Parsnips

One of the oddities of food shopping in Germany is that I can't find anywhere selling parsnips. Eventually, after much looking I found somewhere selling beige taproots that looked like immature parsnips. They had big bunches of leaves attached to the top. I went to Wikipedia and it said that parsnip leaves are poisonous and you shouldn't even handle them, so I took them off and threw them away, thinking something was odd here, and commenced munching my way through the parsnips.

Later, with the benefit of a bit more vocabulary, I went back to the same place and checked the word these vegetables were labelled with (Petersilie), and blow me down if it turns out they weren't actually parsley!

So, from this I have learned that parsnip leaves are poisonous, that I threw out a whole load of parsley I could have cooked with, that parsley has taproots that look like immature parnips (turns out they are members, along with carrots and lots of other things, of the same family, though the resemblance of the names is coincidence)—and that I can't actually tell parsley roots from parsnips when I eat them! (Next time I might pay more attention to their taste).

And I still haven't managed to find parsnips here, but now I know parsley roots will do instead!