A very unusual parsnip

Was up at the allotment this morning - very grey and bleak up there and extremely boggy underfoot. Needless to say I was the only one there, but I had a shopping list from my family for Christmas grub. And that included leeks and parsley and sprouts - so there I was digging and picking! Whilst there I also dug up some jerusalem artichokes. They are very knobbly and hard to clean, even more impossible to peel, but they are wonderful in a mixture of various roast vegetables. You don't want too many of them on their own though! They are rather like baked beans and worse than sprouts!!
I have also been nurturing a rogue parsnip that decided to grow in the middle of the gravel and stone path across the plot - it was never going to be a prizewinner, given the "soil" it was growing in - but how about this!! Roasted, it will feed quite a few mouths!

 

I really look forward to a new growing season just around the corner now we have passed the shortest day here in the Northern Hemisphere.

Meanwhile

I wish all my readers and supporters a peaceful and joyful Christmas and a Happy New Year. 

Wibbly wobbly parsnip

I think it was HRH Prince Charles who once said that we should not spurn "wibbly wobbly carrots." He was I believe thinking of the supermarket carrots that must all conform to rigid size and shape criteria, or apparently we, the public, will not buy them.

I may have mentioned that our allotments are very stony. Root crops don't like stony soil - it tends to make them fork!! And how about these for forked and wibbly wobbly parsnips!

The trick of course is to either sift the soil (and I use the stones to make the paths across the plot) or to dig a trench where the root seeds are to be sown and fill it with compost. This I now do and I can now grow super straight parsnips!

I did cook and eat these strange creatures and they tasted jolly good anyway. But I doubt if any one would have bought them in a supermarket somehow!