The great turnip experiment

Okay, so it wasn't really great, and it wasn't  REALLY an experiment since I used a recipe. But it did involve turnips.

It is a fact universally known to people who manage a CSA that their customers must be in want of foods they do not particularly like, or of whose identity they cannot be absolutely certain. And so the customers receive those foods. In GREAT quantities.

Some of these foods demand creativity to make them palatable. Sometimes the customer pairs them with other foods they DO like (I personally recommend copies amounts of chocolate). Or pairs the foods with other foods that go well together, such as more chocolate. It the foods have parts that must be removed, such as leaves or skin, the customer throws herself exuberantly into peeling or deleafing, sometimes resulting in more of the food going into the disposal or garbage than is strictly necessary. In extreme cases, she pretends the food has gone off on a Great Adventure in the bowels of the refrigerator, and expresses surprise and regret -- sometimes real, sometimes feigned -- when it emerges, months later, inedible and must be disposed of.

We have received turnips several times in our basket, and I have tried numerous ways to make them palatable. All were about as successful as making a chess board palatable. Weighing my options this time, it seemed a shame to waste chocolate on them, and so I chose to pair the turnips with sweet potatoes and hearty sage. In this way I hoped to obliterate the taste of the turnips altogether, given that the recipe called for 30 leaves of sage, which could pretty much obliterate the taste of anything.

After a few bites I declared the dish a success, based on 1) actually using the turnips, but 2) not actually tasting the turnips.

The Hero is extremely enthusiastic about nearly every dish I make, to the point where I once said I needed a more objective opinion to help me truly improve my cooking. He took this suggestion seriously, and now offers one of two measured, thoughtful opinions on any given dish or meal:

1) This is the best dish EVER made ANYWHERE!
2) This is not swill.*

So I fully expected one of these responses when I asked what he thought about the sweet potato-turnip mash.

"It's okay," he said, shrugging.

"Wow," I said. "That bad, huh?"

He thought it would be improved by "some spice...cinnamon, maybe."

"Hmmm," I said.

"You don't think it would be better with cinnamon?" he asked.

"Well," I said. "it wouldn't be swill."

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*We are indebted to certain readers for introducing this word into the Hero's eating vocabulary.