{"id":30719,"date":"2025-03-07T07:34:56","date_gmt":"2025-03-07T12:34:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=30719"},"modified":"2025-03-07T08:31:19","modified_gmt":"2025-03-07T13:31:19","slug":"winter-vegetables","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=30719","title":{"rendered":"Winter vegetables"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nRutabaga pie<\/em><\/p>\n

For some reason — is it because of the political disaster? — the winter of 2024-2025 has felt incredibly long. Where I live, we’ve had two miserable intrusions of the polar vortex. I had planned a February visit to Washington, but I had to cancel it because of ugly weather. Maybe I’m being more liberal with the heating system, but I had the highest electric bill in January that I’ve ever had. In February, the wind blew down a tree, and the tree fell on the power line that feeds the road I’m on. That broke a power pole and left about 400 feet of wire on the ground. It took 24 hours for the power company to put in a new pole and haul the fallen wires back up. Fortunately I have a generator and can keep lights, the computer, and the refrigerator running.<\/p>\n

Americans don’t eat a lot of rutabagas, though grocery stores where I am usually have them. I suspect that’s because the rutabagas we get here have a very long shelf life. They’re dipped in paraffin wax and keep forever at the grocery store or in the fridge. They’re as hard a ball of marble. Peeling them is downright dangerous. They’ll want a good 40 minutes in the pot to cook up tender. When the battle between a knife and a ball of marble is over, they’re a comfort food. Mashed, with butter, is the default way of fixing them.<\/p>\n

I made a very nice rutabaga pie, though. I wasn’t sure whether to call it a pie or a quiche, because the method of making it is something of a cross between pie-making and quiche-making. Think eggs, cheese, milk, and some browned onions to add umami. Don’t forget to add a little nutmeg.<\/p>\n

Wikipedia has a nice article on rutabagas<\/a>. In some northern countries, they’re probably as important as potatoes. In Scotland, where they are called neeps, I’ve cooked neeps on a camp stove in a yurt. Neeps are so plentiful in some places that they’re used as a food for livestock. It amuses me to think that the sheep that provided the wool for my collection of Harris tweed jackets probably ate neeps. Neeps in the wool!<\/p>\n

Winter vegetables are a big help in making winters more bearable. I don’t think there is a single winter vegetable that can’t be made into a comfort food.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rutabaga pie For some reason — is it because of the political disaster? — the winter of 2024-2025 has felt incredibly long. Where I live, we’ve had two miserable intrusions of the polar vortex. I had planned a February visit to Washington, but I had to cancel it because of ugly weather. Maybe I’m being … Continue reading “Winter vegetables”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-umami"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30719"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30735,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30719\/revisions\/30735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}