Besides garlic, one other vegetable has survived this winter...parsnips. These parsnips were planted last spring. Their lush summer foliage has long since died, but they regrew new winter leaves...
There are a little over a dozen parsnips in the patch, and many of them are huge. I am a big fan of these root vegetables. While they are a lot like carrots, I find their cooked flavor to be far superior. Cut into chunks,
tossed with oil, salt, and pepper and then roasted in the oven at 400 degrees for 30 or 40 minutes, parsnips are delicious.
So, in order to eat the parsnips, you've got to harvest them. I chose this guy for my supper.
These plants have deep roots, especially after 10 months of growth. Just grabbing that tuft of leaves and yanking is NOT going to work. So, you have to dig them out...gently, so you get the whole root. I used my spade to dig all the way around the plant.
Eventually, it gets loose enough that you can grab the top of the root with your hand and pull. The tip still got left in the soil, about a foot deep...but I got most of it out. I pulled a few more, and then arranged my harvest.
These three "small" parsnips are of a more normal size. I've put a watch in the picture for scale. My watchband is 9 inches long.
Here's the plant from the 'digging up' pictures above. This parsnip is scary-looking. Clearly if this one had been grown on a commercial farm, he'd have been tossed out as unmarketable. Since I don't care much about how veggies look, just how they taste, at my house he still gets eaten...
As does this 4-legged monster. Yes, that's one parsnip with 4 roots coming out of it. Crazy, right? Not as crazy as digging that beast out of my garden.
These parsnips roasted up tender and sweet. Just like carrots, parsnips get sweeter when frost and winter hit. Starches convert to sugars, and to my palate, oven roasting brings out the best in them.
So, do parsnips ever make an appearance on your table? If so, how do you prepare them?
I've never grown parsnips. I keep thinking of it, but they haven't made the cut yet. I'm sure they will someday as I like trying new things.
ReplyDeleteDaphne, the first year I tried to grow them was a failure. I planted them late and the seeds did not germinate in our warm Virginia spring. Last year I put seed in the ground pretty close to our last frost date, and they did great.
ReplyDeleteOur swiss chard usually wintered over in VA, but this past winter in Idaho I tried to cover them with straw because of the sub-zero temps. DON'T DO IT! The ones that didn't get covered are sprouting fine but the ones that were covered rotted away. Lesson learned. Man, we had some nights of -20 deg f and the naked ones still made it. That's one hardy vegetable green. Have a few onions that we missed during fall harvest sprout up as well. I love this stuff! Now if I can just keep the mule deer away...
ReplyDeleteI suspect you can figure out a tasty way to handle your deer problem. Swiss Chard is an over-wintering champ. Mine did great last year, but I planted them too late in the season this year and they did not get established in time for our first real cold spell.
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