The Tale of the Turnip

I’m reading this really terrible book called Outlander… by terrible, I of course mean excellent. It’s this mythical romance-adventure book with lots of inappropriate parts. In the book, the main character slips through a crack in time and ends up living in the Scottish Highlands 200 years earlier. That I can buy. What I cannot accept is when the lead protagonist talks about the delish roast meats and turnips she comes to love in her 18th century life. Why do I find that so hard to swallow (literally and figuratively)? I am here to tell you that there is nothing delicious about a turnip. Nothing. I would know…

So, for those that have read my blog in the past, you know that I love to eat and to explore new restaurants. Writing reviews of some of Boston’s best (and worst) places was generally the content of my posts. Well, I’ve found myself shifting gears in the last year and eating out less. Sure, part of it was a desire to be more frugal – who isn’t these days? But more so, it’s been about being more thoughtful (which often means, critical) of what I eat.

It started innocently enough… I read a bunch of articles about local food and organic farming. As a person who loves food, at first it was really about learning where to get the freshest, tastiest ingredients and specialty items. Then I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Then I watched Food, Inc. Then I got horrified, sad, and frustrated. Then I decided to make some changes. Then came the turnips.

As a general rule of thumb, if you decide to make some radical changes in your diet and challenge yourself to eating at least 75% local fruits and vegetables, don’t do it in December. In New England. You know what grows in the dead of winter in the northeast? Come on, you had to know this was coming – turnips. Ok, luckily turnips aren’t the only thing to grow around here this time of year – you can also get apples, sweet potatoes, beets, butternut squash, potatoes, parsnips, sprouts, onions, and this super weird, grubby little veg called celeriac (or celery root). But the turnips are prolific. So prolific, you will need to find 892 ways to make turnips. I am at about 436.

Unfortunately, you can’t walk into most grocery stores and get a lot of local, organic veggies during this season. So, I’ve opted to receive a bi-weekly delivery of Boston Organic’s Dogma Box. I’ve been a Boston Organics customer for a few years. I love that it’s local company that supports organic farming. But for all those years, I was happily getting my organic bananas in February and ignoring those lurking questions about how far they’d traveled and what was consumed in getting them into my green plastic Boston Organics bin (the cursed bin that I never remember to put out on delivery day).

Well, after absorbing the compelling information from AVM and Food, Inc., I decided to push myself further and make not just organic choices, but local too. Now, I don’t live under a rock. I know there’s a ton of competing evidence out there about the value of eating local – and whether it might even be doing more harm than good (common sense would dictate that the closer your food is sourced, the fresher it is and the less of a carbon impact it has in transportation, but many will argue that the economies of scale that are achieved in shipping tons of food around the world offset that – I can see both sides).

I’ve also educated myself enough about organic farming to know that things are changing in that world faster than anyone can keep up and that organic standards are degrading before our very eyes. I think most people would agree that ideally food would be produced without pesticides (I know that I’m not psyched to put a bunch of chemicals in my body if I can avoid it), but now that some major players – like Walmart – are featuring more organic choices, there’s incredible pressure to produce organic food more economically which results in lower governmental standards for the definition of “organic.” But, as the saying goes, something is better than nothing. And that’s the way I’ve been approaching this little experiment.

First I want to say, I am FAR from perfect in this effort… I still believe that Diet Coke is manna from heaven and I happily gulp now this corn-syrup laden treat at least once per day. I haven’t yet progressed to buying organic and free range meat. I allow myself to buy 25% out-of-season non-organic non-local produce. Just today I picked up broccoli rabe, cilantro, and lemons at the grocery store. But I am working towards change. In Food, Inc., at the end of the movie there was a quote that said something to the effect of, “you vote three times a day…” I believe in the power of voting. So I am trying to cast mine the right way.

Making these choices means some sacrifice. I often sacrifice a few more cents or dollars for organic choices. It means not eating asparagus whenever I want – and I love asparagus. And it means eating turnips. And turnips, as far as I am concerned, are pretty darn icky. I’ve made roasted turnips (meh), scalloped turnips (mmmph), and mashed turnips (not too bad). And I am sure that I’ll try a handful more before spring finally arrives…

It’s an adventure and I hope you’ll join me for some of it. I am going to attempt to blog at least twice a month about my food choices. If you’re interested in this topic, please come back… if you miss the restaurant reviews, I promise to throw some in (there are some great Boston establishments focusing more and more on local food). If you’re compelled enough to read this, I hope you’ll also try some things of your own… I’ll give a suggestion in each post and I hope you’ll comment with additional ideas!

January’s idea: Check out Boston Organics! It’s a cool service and you can customize your order a number of different ways. This article represents a lot of the reasons I try and eat organic – check it out.

Unless you are realllly feeling up to it, I would start slow with this and not necessarily get the Dogma Box. However, if you do, prepare yourself for those turnips. Here’s an idea of what to do with them (pretty tasty and freezes well if you make a double batch): Mashed Potatoes and Turnips.