Sunday, September 6, 2009

VegExperiment '09

I grew up eating carrots, celery, corn, and peas. That pretty much sums up my childhood vegetable exposure.

As I have grown up and my palette has matured slightly I have begun venturing into farther reaches of the vegetable spectrum. At restaurants, I will order dishes with more outlandish vegetable mixes, and at home I have become slightly more adventurous, adding spinach, edamame, broccoli, asparagus, and zucchini as recurring characters in my cooking life. I have not however, by any means become a veggie expert. And this is what I intend to do. Thus begins the VegExperiment of 2009.

Each week when Joe and I do the shopping I am going to pick a vegetable from the produce section that I have never cooked with and fix something with it. I decided that produce products I had previously eaten but never cooked would still qualify although I think I am going to start with those that I have never even tasted.

This all started last week when Joe and I did our weekly grocery shopping at 1:30 in the morning and the produce section was looking pretty picked over. So, I bought some kale since it looked the freshest. Then I had to figure out what to do with it.

Many patients who I told the kale purchasing story to tryed to scare me away from the leafy green, but I stood my ground and Joe and I ended up having a very delightful pasta dish made with kale, chickpeas, and pinenuts, which we both agreed we would eat again. Was pretty tasty, the kale wasn't difficult to use, and I was inspired. So this week I am trying beets. We'll see how that goes.

10 comments:

Melanie said...

I like your plan. Jameson and I made a similar experiment the other day while at a produce stand. There was a melon we had never heard of and the total cost was like $0.79. How could we not? Of course we laughed after deciding to purchase said melon when we both realized we had no idea how to choose out a good one. Overall it was fun though, despite the fact that it ended up tasting like a watered down cantaloupe... Keeps life more interesting to try new things...

Casie said...

What kind of melon was it. Joe and I bought a canary melon with similar results. We thought it tasted like watered down honeydew.

Walter the Crouch said...

What the heck is a Kale?

Stephanie said...

so are you going to share some of these recipes?

Casie said...

Walter, kale is a leafy green vegetable kinda like collard greens or spinach.

Steph, sure can!

Casie said...

here is a link to where i got the kale recipe in case you are interested. I don't think the recipe says, but if you have never worked with kale you need to know that you shouldn't eat the center stem. It is woody and not yummy at all.

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2009/08/healthy-delicious-kale-and-chickpea-pasta-vegetarian-recipe.html

Melanie said...

Santa Clause melon. Yep, that is not a typo and you read it correctly... How could we not try it?

nothingistatic said...

I read your thing about beets on facebook and I would suggest pickled beets until I realized your disdain for pickles so really I suppose I'm useless.

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Osias R. Barliso Jr said...

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