"THEY LOOK LIKE THEY'RE FROM OUTER SPACE," Owen said. "NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO BE...........THEY'RE ACTUALLY KIND OF FRIGHTENING."
~ John Irving,
A Prayer for Owen Meany
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| unorthodox umbellifers |
They are not from outer space, or from the Marianas trench. Nor are they 3D renderings of vital organs depicted in The Far Side. To the best of my knowledge, they are parsnips, though somewhat different from the parsnips depicted on the seed package. I had forgotten these specimens, unearthed last October, until yesterday. It was past time to dig up any parsnips remaining in the ground, since many had sprouted a couple of inches of new green top. Most of them were of the more conventional parsnip configuration, but there was one more with this strange configuration of multiple roots growing out of one top. With so much surface area, these creatures are able to keep a solid grip on the ground they live in and I was lucky to have the benefit of soft spring earth on my side yesterday. It took a little extra digging and a careful two-handed yank before I was able to view the freakish vegetable. All of these oddities came from the same bed, where they had come of age alongside peas last summer. Interesting. While the difficulties of digging and cleaning multi-pronged roots are definitely drawbacks, the food is just as good and they look pretty cool. Makes me wish there was a pageant they could be entered in. Yesterday's parsnip harvest was the second of this spring and yielded 3.8 edible kg.
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| surreal sunchokes |
Sunchoke tubers sometimes resemble flower bulbs, sometimes a hybrid of the Pillsbury Doughboy and Pig Pen, often a sketch of multiplying yeast cells with random bloops all over the surface. They readily detach themselves from the plants which bore them and are fairly agreeable about being removed from the soil. No Easter egg hunt for me, thanks; I'd rather just grope about in the dirt here for tubers. That's the fun part. Figuring out what to do with them in the kitchen is the tough bit. I think they could be excellent deep fried, like potato chips. But we don't do that.
Not far into the sunchoke bed, they started coming up with a generous coating of white fungus. I haven't been able to find out what it is or whether is is safe to eat the tuber after peeling. Ce n'est pa grave, though. We have over 3 kg of good-looking sunchokes, and, given the culinary mystery of them, that amount should last us a while.
(This was two weeks ago.)
