CSA: The Lovely Turnip

I have been really behind in everything. It was my original goal to write about what I got in my CSA every week and ease myself back into writing regularly.  That has not happened. I don't like excuses, and me giving and excuse for not writing leaves a bad taste in my mouth, because it is a lie.  I have been writing, just not here.  The thing that I wrote, even got published in the paper. A normal person would think that I would be over the moon to having something published in the paper. In fact some people would believe I would do a little jiggly happy dance around my kitchen crooning to my cats while my husband smirks at my antics. The truth is, what I wrote was not really something to celebrate. I wrote my brothers obituary.

Just typing that sentence out, causes crickets to chirp in the silence of my mind.  It has not been an easy January.  I am not going to talk about it at this point. I may to so later, but for the past two weeks I have done nothing but talk about it, which is why I am not really going to do so now. Instead I am going to admit failure with turnips.  My box from Strites (my CSA) came and there were turnips in it. I had to laugh, as I heard my husbands groan.  I am pretty sure that he would rather we get some weird squash we had never heard of, or perhaps more cider or apples, than a dozen turnips.

I want to like turnips. I thought I did. The recipe that I procured from my friend, Clay was wonderful; however a person needs more than one recipe for turnips.  The same recipe over and over again for the same ingredient loses luster. I only have one recipe and having made it twice, my husband has thrown in the towel. The want to like something is not the same as actually liking something. I want to believe that turnips and me can get along, and that they are not the bastard child of a potato and a radish that have a texture close to pears. (Pears are my arch enemy. To me, they are bland wet fruit rolled in sand.  My husband disagrees.)

All is not lost with the turnip, because it turns out that the turnip is massively photogenic. I wish I could say the same for me. The turnip is so photogenic that my older brother set it as my profile picture on his phone.  I am now as lovely as a turnip.

I can only shudder to think what is going to be in next weeks CSA, but overall I have been pleased with what we have received in the last few weeks. The over all experience has forced me to try new recipes, organize my meals and think out side of the box.  I am looking forward to the summer CSA.  Below is a list of what is in the boxes I have received, and it does include more than just turnips.

Winter CSA #7

In the Box:

Gala Apples

Kabocha Squash

Cabbage

White Potatoes

Multigrain Bread

Winter CSA # 8

Red Delicious Apples

Apple Cider

Brussel Sprouts

Spaghetti Squash

Turnips

Redskin Potatoes

Winter CSA #9

Fuji Apples

Garlic

Red Onion

Winter Squash

Cabbage

Dried Apples

Red Potatoes

Fall CSA: The Missing Weeks

My plan was a simple plan. I would write about what I got every week in my fall CSA. It was supposed to get me back in to the saddle of writing after taking a bit longer of a break than anticipated for the holidays.  That was the plan.  I made it two weeks in, and then time skipped forward and I couldn't catch up before the next box of fresh veggies and fruits would arrive.

This is me playing catch up and trying to figure out what to do with sweet potatoes. The last time I wrote I was lamenting over what to do with collard greens and turnips.  My friend, Dr. Jolly is a turnip genius, and I can day that I am no longer afraid of them. Oven roasted with spices and sugar made them an acceptable substitute for potatoes and quite tasty, that even my husband will eat them and not grumble too loudly.  I still want to leave them out for the Hogfather, but seeing that the Hogfather only comes once a year and I have plenty of turnips, there will be more turnips in my future menus until next Hogswatch.

Collard Greens are one of those things that I have to thank Dr. Jolly for also, since otherwise I might have left them out for the rabbits. Instead they ended up in homemade  Kung Pao Chicken.  It seemed like a good idea at the time, and it turned out well. I don't think that Collard Greens were meant to go in Chinese Food, but it didn't hurt anything and I can say that I ate my veggies. Even if they were cooked down and slathered in a spicy sauce.  It still counts as eating my veggies.

Week Three

Gala Apples
Kabocha Squash (Yippee another new squash that I have never heard of and have no idea what to do with!)
Broccoli
Sweet Potatoes (Still not done with the last ones, and now I have a small army of sweet potatoes, and yet can't help but thing about The Bloggess and Sam the Yam.)
Kale

Week Four

Apple Cider
Fresh Greens (Looks like baby Spinach to me)
Brussel Sprouts (I still think they look like alien pods like I did when I was 8.)
Apples
Acorn Squash

I never realized what a lazy cook I was until joining a CSA.  I thought I was a pretty active cook, and that my cook book challenge was keeping me from falling into a culinary lull.  That was all a lie until I joined the CSA, because now I am challenge to figure out what to do with the items in my white box every week. It is not as easy as throwing stuff on the grill and calling it a day. I guess I could do that, if I wanted to stand out in the dark and the cold wind while I try to figure out if the potatoes are done, which I don't.  I don't want to hang out in the cold where the wind has a habit of cutting through you like a hot knife to butter. I like my creature comforts, which means I have to put a little more effort in to my meals, and possibly eat an apple a day to combat the growing number of apples in my fridge.

Despite the challenge that this presents me, I can't help but feel like I won the lottery every week when I open my CSA box.  I never really know what I am going to get, and since my friend, Lizzy is doing it with me, it is a pleasure to know that she also has a sweet potato/apple infestation and I am not alone in this.   It is two days until my next box, and I have only used up about half of both boxes, and part of me wants to laugh hysterically if I end up with another potato and the other part of me wants to cry, because I know I will end up with another potato or possibly some other item bigger than my head that has never graced my kitchen before and I won't know what to do with.  I have begun to believe that laughing and crying are two sides of the same coin.

Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Review

I received The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman as a gift for Christmas. I wasn't sure what to expect, because I had not heard anything about it.  I have to say that it was one of the best Christmas gifts I have ever received.  If you haven't read the book, you should.

I love to read, so I could completely relate to the main character who had a deep love for books and found them as his solace as a child. The way that Ocean at the End of the Lane is written reminds me in a lot of ways of Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine.  There were moments in both books  that made me fall in love with good food all over again. The descriptions of food made me relish those moments in life when you taste something that brings an inner balance to you.  It made me long for the collard greens by Dr. Jolly, and miss the days when my mother would take the time to make haluski.  The memories of fresh peaches from my childhood, so juicy there was a trail that ran down my arm with every bite rang solidly in between the words.

The Ocean at the End of Lane is not about food. It is very much a book that gives you food for thought. Part of me wishes it was, because food plays an integral part in memory and I would love to have a meal at the Hempstocks table; however I think that what the book is really about is finding yourself. There was a good part of the book that made me want to cry, and I had utterly convinced myself that Neil Gaiman couldn't write anything cheerful ever. Every childhood has horrors that there is no escape from, and it is part of the journey one must make to reach adult hood. When I finished the book, I dried more than a few tears and was really grateful for the fact that Neil Gaiman doesn't write bubble gum fiction. He writes good solid fiction that knows how to ping the recess of your mind and bring forth emotion that you didn't even know was bottled inside you.

The book reminds me of what it was like to be a child and to have to deal with grown up things much sooner before a person is ready to.  It reminded me of how hard it is to learn those lessons and that looking back and understanding what you are seeing is even harder to do then most people would believe. It reminded me that the outsides and the insides of a person very rarely match.  I am grateful for this reminder.

“Nobody looks like what they really are on the inside. You don’t. I don’t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody.” 
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane