Where do all the carrots go?

She waggles the broccoli head towards me like a club. 'So what are you going to do with this?'

'Eat it!'

Facetious response. She is being serious. 'Claro, of course, but how do you cook it?'

'Well...'

'You boil it?'

'No, no... No!' Suddenly the accusation that I might boil broccoli, or anything, seems to demand strenuous denial. I sense an eagerness, an edge of discovery in this searching question from the market stall assistant, habitually a quiet woman who just gets on with the job.

'So what do you do with your broccoli?' she demands, pointing it at my heart.

It's not often I get the chance to expound our method of cooking vegetables - people tend to drift away - so I seize the moment. 'I chop it into small pieces,' I tell her with a chopping motion of the hand (Spanish requires whole-body communication) 'and cook it in a pan with a lid, adding just a very little water. So it steams, really. Then when it's nearly cooked I add a little olive oil.'

She nods approvingly as though I've passed a test. 'So you eat it as a salad.'

Well no, not salad. Or perhaps... yes, thinking about it. What she means is that we eat the broccoli as a food in its own right, not as an ingredient. That's right, I tell her: we eat it as a salad.

She places the broccoli on her weighing scales in satisfied silence. There's a feeling that we've touched on something fundamental here.

I've puzzled for many years over one of the most extraordinary aspects of life on this island. The place is full of fruit and vegetables, they grow them by the truckload, they sell them everywhere. There are four permanent greengrocery stalls in the local market and several more on Saturdays, specialist greengrocery shops in town and fruit-and-veg counters in every little supermarket. People emerge with shopping bags bulging with broccoli, carrots, leeks, green beans, peppers, tomatoes...

But as far as we've been able to establish, they never eat any of it.

Explain, please. Okay. Take a typical fiesta here in our village (see the story dated 6 October 2015) which largely revolves around eating and drinking. There is a conveyor belt of food that begins around midday and lasts all afternoon. First up is a rich stew of garbanzos, chick peas, in meat stock. Next come plates of fried pork, eaten with bread or just with more fried pork. Then chunks of goat cheese to be eaten with home-baked bread before the next course which is bacalao, salt cod, accompanied by potatoes boiled in their skins, Canary style, and served with the mandatory oil-and-garlic sauce called mojo.

No vegetables yet, you'll notice, unless you include potatoes. Now comes the prize dish of the day, fried goat meat eaten in French style with your fingers, off the bone. A palate-cleansing salad would go down well after that... but you won't get one unless you bring your own.

Then we're into the puddings, cakes and ice lollies.

Long ago we learned what to expect at these banquets and we prepare by cramming down salad and fresh fruit in advance to lessen the craving. In fact we have a reputation as lettuce-eaters. The other day, after a splendid fish dish in a local restaurant, the proprietor Jacinta said she’d told the cook to give us plenty of salad garnish because she knew we’d eat it. We left only the fishbones. This is almost unique behaviour, everyone else sends their plate back with the salad garnish untouched.

Yet the vegetable farmers and greengrocers here are thriving! They drive all-terrain vehicles with chromium-plated cow fenders and GPS navigation, they build palaces with orange-tiled roofs. They are selling all the fruit and vegetables they can pile up on their counters.

So where on earth is it all going?

Theory 1: The restaurants take it all

This is easily knocked down. You will never be served carrots, broccoli or any other vegetable with your fish or meat here, not even as an optional extra. It’s true that any restaurant will prepare you a wonderful mixed salad, a visual and gustatory delight, but it’s salad rather than vegetables and mostly the foreign visitors who order them. No, this can’t account for it.

Theory 2: The locals eat vegetables at home although not in restaurants

No, they don’t eat them at home either, we’ve been to lots of family meals and we have never glimpsed a dish of carrots. If there’s a salad it has been created especially for us. They do eat oranges.

Theory 3: It’s the resident foreigners who buy it all

Well yes, we foreigners buy fruit and veg of course, but there aren’t all that many of us. Simple observation at the market stalls shows Gomerans hugely outnumber foreigners.

Theory 4: It all goes into soups and stews

This is slightly more convincing. Soups and stews are very much part of the local cuisine - but can they possibly eat enough soup and stew to account for such quantities?

Theory 5: People take health-giving baths in vegetable soup, like Cleopatra bathing in milk

Don’t be silly.

Theory 6: They indulge in midnight vegetable orgies, crunching carrots furtively by candlelight in the kitchen

Nope, that’s us.

I give up, it’s beyond me. Perhaps the goats get it all, the ancient secret of Gomera's wonderful cheeses.