which_chick | (no subject)

Random acts of Rutabaga (and some pony, but not much)

We are getting to the part of the year where I eat a more-or-less free vegetable-based diet that comes from assorted gardens. We're not quite there, yet, but it'll be soon.

I recently got a huge bag of "thinnings" from my mom's illustrious and wonderful collard patch. (I <3 collard greens.) So, dinner yesterday and dinner today have been collards-n-bacon. You fry the bacon, see, then set it aside, pour off most of the grease, and then you sorta steam-fry the baby collards in the rest of the bacon grease until they're edible. Add some butter and salt, maybe, if it suits you, and then put the bacon back on top before eating.

Baby collards are spicier (a bit) and more tender than grown-up collards. They are still awesome.

I am also making Roasted Root Vegetables for work lunch. Rutabagas, carrots, and onions in a roasting pan, with some knobs of butter. I realize it is not exactly Roasted Root Vegetables season, but I was visited by Random Acts of Rutabagas today. Allow me to explain.

Trysta's Matt is a useful fellow. He has lots of guns and is an enthusiastic groundhog killer. (Groundhogs are not good for the hayfield or the horse legs. We are anti-groundhog in these parts.) He came with his very own Bobcat (the piece of machinery, not a felid) and attachments. And his stepdad (who is a preacher) is somehow involved with the people from the food bank, which results in strange and wonderful food windfalls coming in my general direction.

See, the food bank wants to have and distribute "fresh produce" to food bank customers. (I'm in favor of this. "Fresh produce" is better than canned crap and people who are suffering from food insecurity probably benefit from the better nutrition found in fresh produce, so yay.) The fly in the ointment, here, is that the food bank receives all kinds of fresh produce, some of which they know (from experience) that food bank visitors will not take. They do not like to refuse donations of fresh produce, so they accept whatever is given... but when they get, say, half a bushel of perfectly ripe avocados or a box of larger-than-softball-size rutabagas, they know full well that these will need to be rehomed to persons who are not food bank customers. (They do keep some of the avocados and rutabagas and stuff, to try to hand them out, but nobody ever takes them and the food bank people feel bad about wasting donations/food.)

Apparently, if you are affiliated with the food bank people, they ask you if you know anyone who needs/will eat this strange produce before it goes bad. (It has a short shelf life, being "fresh produce"-- so it needs to be rehomed and consumed promptly.) And Matt's stepdad says "YES" because the horse people (his stepson's woman and family and associates) will eat almost anything. So that's how I wound up with four massive rutabagas and "all I wanted" on the ripe avocado front. (I took four. I can't eat more than four before they go bad.) They don't really eat rutabagas, but I do and they know I do, so... I have four. Well, three now. They're freaking huge. I'm not sure how fast the horse people think I can eat rutabagas, but they wanted me to have "enough" to do something with. :) (I may try mashing some of them.) The horse people also got fresh tomatillos (these are not something anyone knows anything about, but hell, they were free) because they seem to think food adventures are like travel, only cheaper. I didn't have any ideas for the fresh tomatillos, so I didn't take any of those.

On the pony front, I trimmed Wren and Roxy today (feet) and took Te for a spin (noted in previous entry) and Nick for a different spin and worked on my pokeweed initiative. It was a pretty good day.