Published in Bob’s Fresh and Local CSA Newsletter, 6/21/2017.
If you are interested in sustainable agriculture, and your CSA membership says you are, you probably know that those veggies are a lot easier on the environment and our water resources than animal agriculture — so much so that Frances Moore Lappe suggested in 1972 in Diet for a Small Planet that we would be better served to eat the grains we grow for animals than to feed them to animals and eat the animals.
So I’m always excited to bring home my box of CSA veggies! It is one contribution I make to taking care of this beautiful earth. As with last week, we’ll see a lot of greens, wonderful greens, a sure sign that it’s early in the season, and we have many luxurious, fresh vegetable-filled weeks to go. So I want to say a word about greens, but I want to focus this week on turnips and radishes, root veggies which we are also enjoying now.
GREENS. Today was a banner day for me. This morning I enjoyed a kale, spinach, soy milk, seeds, fruit and ice cube “Greenie” for breakfast, a delicious way to start the day.
For lunch, I enjoyed the rest of my greens from last week, two lettuces, one red and one green, some mizuna, tokyo bekana, and kale, topped with red onion, radishes and walnut pieces and dressed with extra virgin olive oil, freshly squeezed lemon juice, salt and pepper. Be sure to mince the stems and throw them into your salad along with the broken walnuts. Any little bits of veggie waste can go into compost.
ROOT VEGGIES & THE ENVIRONMENT.
I just learned this week that of all the veggies, root veggies are some of the easiest on environmental resources. Last week we received two kinds of turnips, white Hakurei turnips and red turnips. I cut mine up, coated them with extra virgin olive oil and roasted them, chopped and briefly sauteed the turnip greens with olive oil, garlic and seasonings, then mixed both with cooked white beans. With the addition of a little more olive oil, white Balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper, I had a lovely dish to eat warm or cold (as a salad).
RADISHES are also great roasted. They’re delicious as an unusual side dish or make a colorful addition to a roasted veggie platter.
One of my favorite things to do with turnips is to pickle them, Middle Eastern style. Beets thrown into the pickling mixture give the beets their pink color, which deepens with more beets or longer pickling. On the occasion pictured here from last summer, I enjoyed my pickled turnips with scrambled tofu and greens — and beautiful tomatoes included in my box. Next time I make beet pickles, I’m going to try it without the vinegar, let them ferment 
to get that tangy flavor, which results in a denser population of probiotics.
PICKLED TURNIPS
Make a brine of 4 cups water, 1 cup vinegar and 3 TB kosher salt. Set aside. Wash a wide mouth glass jar. Prepare your pickling veggies, in this case turnips, by washing and cutting (peeling for older or larger turnips). Add sliced garlic if desired. Pack the veggies into the jar, and pour brine over the veggies until the jar is filled, stirring the brine as you work to be certain it stays evenly mixed. you may need a small dish held down by something with weight to keep the turnips under water. If you put your pickles directly into the refrigerator, it will take a couple of weeks for them to pickle. Alternatively, let them pickle on your kitchen counter for 2-5 days, and move to the refrigerator when they taste as you would like.
I love these spring and summer veggies!
If you’d like more information about the CSA, please visit Bob’s Fresh and Local (produce) and All Grass Farms (livestock, chickens, milk and cheese).
For more, visit my blog, vegetatingwithleslie.org, “Like” me on FaceBook/Vegetating with Leslie or follow me on Twitter, @vegwithleslie.
Leslie, what do you know about a plant based diet as a preventative for Alzheimer’s?
I don’t know anything specific, Ana. I’ll look into it a little first chance I get. I do know that some researchers link sugar and Alzheimer’s, even calling Alzheimer’s Type III Diabetes. I eliminated added sweeteners and refined foods (almost all packaged and processed foods, actually), including artificial sweeteners, from my diet 6 or 7 years ago. Made a big difference in my blood work and in how I feel. I do think that if you stick with plant foods — all that fiber combined with the fats in foods as well as good added fats — makes you feel satisfied, and along with body chemistry changes that happen when you don’t use any added sweeteners or processed foods, you quit craving, keep your blood sugar levels more stable – and potentially that has an impact on developing/not developing Alzheimer’s. Those are merely guesses. I’m neither a doctor nor a nutritionist.