Rutabaga and Turnips

As a 27 year old woman (I'm getting ahead of myself, I still have 20 days as a 26 year old woman, but nonetheless as a grown-ass woman) I should know my vegetables by now. I have been working part-time at a grocery store where fruits and vegetables, both the exotic and common (organic and not) from all over the world are sold. There are too many PLUs to memorize! But in addition to those 4 digit numbers, sometimes I don't even know what some of the fruits and veggies are that pass down my rotating black rubber lane. Which makes it hard to look up the code in my 100+ page binder. Someone bought an "ice cream bean" the other day. WTF is an ice cream bean!?! (Apparently it's similar to a vanilla bean, FYI.)

I want to educate myself on the fruits and vegetables that have evolved on this beautiful planet of ours. I am tired of the same old same: carrots, broccoli, peas, corn, etc...

Today I went to the farmer's market at the Triangle and bought a pound of turnips and a rutabaga from Johnson's farm.

I used a recipe off of my iphone application "How to Cook Everything" for braised and glazed root vegetables. I love this app. I love my iphone. I was anti-iphone for a while. The iphone came out during my last deployment in Iraq. After each deployment, upon my return to the states I was bombarded with the materialistic American culture of excessiveness. I had gone seven months without a cell phone, seven months without regular internet access. No one biologically needs as much variety and as many options as we are given in America. We are culturally conditioned to believe we need our 1,001 options. I was against the iphone at first because I did not see why I would want or need to have access to the internet 24/7, in both populated environments and in areas where cell towers were sparse.

Flash-forward: I am now a college student at UT. There are throngs of young girls donning Nike tempo track shorts, sorority t-shirts, and teds ambling across campus unaware of their surroundings absorbed in the facebook app on their iphones.

I despised these people! One day I even played a game with myself. I counted the number of people total that I saw walking on the street, in addition to counting the number of people who were completely engrossed in their cellular device or mp3 player. The ratio of "connected" people to plain old people-people was unsurprisingly high.

So I was against getting an iphone, or a smart phone or any form of technology that would take me away from the present reality of life. I wanted to experience the real world, not amble around like a somnambulist in a technological dream.

Wow. I've digressed. This is supposed to be about my Veggie Quest. Let me get back on track. Americans today eat an alarmingly large amount of processed foods. (Watch the documentaries King Corn or Food Inc. for an intro.) America is a suburbanized nation. Everything about the way we live is preplanned. Shouldn't an increased amount of planning equate to a better outcome? Not always. With plans come zoning restrictions. Can you imagine a small farm amidst your typical suburban neighborhood? No. Because everything is zoned. Food is transported in from far far away. People shop for food at Walmart, or the other large supermarkets where produce is shipped in from around the world. It may not be in season, but it has been genetically enhanced to be able to grow out of season (which may mean it loses flavor and/or nutrients, but hey! at least we can eat tomatoes year round!)

The majority of children today do not know what real food looks like. They could recognize cheetos, oreos, and any of the other alien food forms that can withstand a nuclear fallout such as the twinkie. But what about a rutabaga? What about a turnip?

My generation may recognize the turnip from Super Mario Brothers games. But who has actually eaten one?



Now I can say that I have. I know what it tastes like. I know what it looks like.

I am going to document the nutritional information as well.

I hope to try a new vegetable at least once a week. I don't want to get too ambitious with once a day, I like my leftovers as much as the next joe.

Here's a photo of tonight's meal:


I made braised and glazed rutabaga, turnips and carrots. Accompanying the veggies was a chicken breast seasoned with cilantro, cumin, cayenne, olive oil and topped with diced tomatoes.

The turnips were buttery and had a crisper texture than the rutabaga. The rutabaga was mushier almost like a potato. Neither of the roots had a very strong flavor to them.

The mixture of root vegetables worked well together, they were thrown in a saucepan with olive oil, chicken and vegetable stock, salt and pepper, a dash of cayenne and salt and pepper. The liquid was boiled off until there was a nice glaze left, to which I added lemon juice.

Here's some nutritional info:

Turnips and rutabagas are both members of the Cruciferae family (AKA the Mustards) which includes broccoli, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, cress, bok choy, kale, collard greens, kohlrabi, rapini, radish, daikon, wasabi, arugula, and a few others which sound even more alien to me (who works at the Central Market grocery store).

Turnips and rutabagas are also both in the Brassica genus who's members contain multiple nutrients with potent anti-cancer properties. And additionally contain high amounts of vitamin C and soluble fiber.

1 cup of cooked turnips has about 35 calories, 3 g of fiber, more than 250 mg of potassium, 18 mg of vitamin C, and 51 mg of calcium

1 cup of cooked rutabaga has 94 calories, 4 g of fiber, 782 g of potassium, 45 mg of vitamin C, 115 mg of calcium, and 55 mg of magnesium.

Nutritional Information from:

Bowden, Jonny, and Jonny Bowden. The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth: the Surprising, Unbiased Truth about What You Should Eat and Why. Gloucester, MA: Fair Winds, 2007. Print.