Turnips

Gather round dooyoo children, I'm going to tell you a little story...about a turnip....called Ned. Now Ned lived in a big field in Dyfed with lots of his turnip siblings, they were happy in the sun, the occasional shower and the regular lovely heap of manure. The only bad events were plagues of flea beetles, sadly some succumbed to club rot, but geberally life was good. But there were murmurings, the older turnips talked a big shiny object from the sky, which ripped them up and they were never seen again. The younger turnips put it down to turnip senility. But then the day came, Ned was swept away, when he came to he was in a bright shiny room, surrounded ...  Read the complete review

Turnip I bought a turnip last week and cooked and ate it yesterday . A turnip Brassica Rapa, yes it’s from the cabbage family is a staple fairly cheap root vegetable. This vegetable is good to eat in winter months great to add to a soup or to serve mashed it makes a good mash combined with potatoes. Turnips are also used for feeding animals. A turnip vegetable is the bottom of the stem and the top of the stalk this swells and grows underground. A long thin tap root comes out of the base of the swollen stem. This is usually cut of before you buy it. The turnip is either a white or slightly yellow coloured vegetable. The leaves grow in a ...  Read the complete review

************* -Background- ************* Traditionally Turnips are thought of as a root crop, and are commonly grown and consumed as such. To be honest, im not a huge fan, but if home grown, picked when small, and eaten freshly, they are fairly delicious. My main experience of them though, has been from the supermarkets. Where they are almost always available at close to 'animal feed' size, and consequently are unfortunately fairly bland tasting, even when combined with more powerful flavours. (Although saying that, creamy mashed Neeps with melted Gruyere through it, does taste incredibly nice). Interestingly, and probably a ...  Read the complete review

Why not have a traditional turnip lantern at Halloween this year instead of the American pumpkin Jack O Lantern. In Scotland, Ireland and the North of England people have been making their Halloween lanterns out of turnips (Swedes as they are known in the South) for centuries. Halloween is all about the dead, and the origin of the turnip lantern was to represent the souls of the dead on this ghostliest of nights. Many people in these areas have now adopted the American pumpkin Jack O Lantern, for their Halloween decoration, probably because the turnip is so difficult to carve, but you really should give it a go, and besides the carved out ...  Read the complete review

It is now Autumn and I am attracted by the return of the season's vegetables. Today for our dinner we had steak with mash and turnips. Turnips are a favourite vegetable of mine, they always remind of Autumn and especially Halloween, when we were children, before we had heard of Pumpkins we used to carve our scary Halloween lanterns from turnips. It was very hard work, a turnip is much harder to carve than a Pumpkin. I grew up in a family of five children and we didn't have a lot of money but my Mother always tried to make filling meals for us, they may not always have been the healthiest but at least "they stuck to your ribs", quite a regular ...  Read the complete review