Parsnip Muffins (adapted from Alton Brown's recipe)

A little over a year ago, I tried a parsnip for the very first time. And then,  (new to the whole veggie box, and unsure of how to best get the vegetables out of the kitchen and into my gullet) I attacked the parsnips with gusto.

And very very quickly overdosed on parsnip.

I was fairly certain that no parsnip should ever pass my lips again. My little brother got married during this past year, and at his wedding the guests were served course after course of absolutely amazing food. Everything was locally sourced and fresh and seasonal and amazing. At the table where I was sitting, everyone raved about the vegetarian pot pie. I dove right in, and came up gasping for air... all I could taste was the parsnip.

However, the world continues to turn and the seasons to change, and the root vegetables to mature. And lo and behold, again came the parsnip. Out of the earth and into my kitchen.

I tentatively put one in a batch of vegetables I was roasting. I ate it nervously, and while I could taste it, it didn't leave me gagging.

This led me to try to give the parsnip another real chance. One relative success I had with them last year was muffins. I couldn't get the kids to eat them at that time, and I was already parsnip-weary, so many of them ended up going to waste. However, as I recalled, they were really pretty nice muffins.

Wow! Give me a year break from parsnips, and a fabulous muffin recipe, and I am a whole new woman!

These things are great! They really are nice and light and fluffy. They are sweet and the nutmeg gives them just enough interest. The kids aren't so afraid of my vegetable antics any more, and they gobbled these muffins all up right away. As a matter of fact, I am going to make more this week.

Parsnip muffins
This is basically Alton Brown's recipe, but I had to convert his measurements from weights into cups, so I thought I would just give it to you the easy way.

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
3/4 cup plain Greek yogurt
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup sugar
2 1/2 cups grated parsnip

Preheat the oven to 375.
Combine the flour, soda, baking powder and salt in a mixing bowl and set aside. In a mixer, combine the eggs, yogurt, oil and sugar until well blended. Add the parsnip and then the dry ingredients.
Mix until just combined.
Pour into greased (or paper-lined) muffin tins.

Bake for 20 minutes or until they're golden brown and they spring back to the touch.

Makes 16-18 muffins

The things I never knew I never knew

When you start looking into eating better, or losing weight, or taking care of the environment, you start to learn that they are all interconnected. There are tons of key words that crop up again and again (organic, local, seasonal, carbon footprint, natural, non-gmo, no preservatives, free trade, free-range, grass fed, whole foods, etc.).  As far as I can tell, all those words and all the different ways they are used boil down to just one thing:

Eat foods that were grown near you, eat them whole, and fresh, cook them yourself, and eat them in season. 

Here is the trick, though. I had no idea what the seasons were for different fruits and veggies! Of course, I can figure out that I went strawberry picking with my kids in the spring, so they must be a spring fruit. And pumpkins and squash are clearly fall veggies. But when do radishes ripen? Or turnips? Or grapes? At my local grocery store, grapes are available every time I am there, year round. Usually I would assume that the prices are cheaper when the fruit is abundant and the growers have to unload it before it rots. Following that logic, grapes should be cheap in July and August, when the grapes are all ripening. This week, though, grapes are on sale for 88 cents per pound. It's March. They should cost an arm and a leg, shouldn't they?  

Now we get into all kinds of topics like the fact that it is grape season in South America, and the grapes for sale at the Ralph's down the street probably came from Argentina, and why I shouldn't buy them because they traveled thousands of miles and are full of pesticides and what about all the fuel used to bring them to me and blah blah blah.  And that is why I should be eating in season.

But how am I supposed to know what is in season? The cheap grapes tricked me!

So, now I get a box of produce that was grown near me, on organic farms, picked when it was ripe and delivered immediately. That takes care of all of the above. Yay me! I don't have to worry about each individual item!

And as it turns out, the people writing recipes? They're magic! They know what is in season! I am finding recipes that help me get rid of  call for produce that is all coming ripe at the same time!

As I was paging through a cookbook a couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon a recipe for turnips and parsnips. Hey! I have turnips and parsnips! And no idea what to do with either one of them! This sounds great! As I read the recipe, I saw that it also called for lemon juice and dill. I just so happened to get a few lemons and a bunch of fresh dill in my box that week! How did they know???

Unfortunately, this particular story doesn't have a happy ending. I made the recipe, following the directions to a T. And boy did I live to regret it.

It was.... gross. That is the only word for it. A big mess of yucky, lemony, parsnipy, turnipy yuckiness. I don't know how I thought I was going to take a vegetable that I am already overly tired of (parsnips), add to it a vegetable that, as far as I can tell, has no taste at all (turnips), add magical lemon and dill fairy dust, and get something palatable. I was wrong.

I ate three bites and declared, "I can't eat this any more." My kids? Hahahaha. Not a chance they were going to put that anywhere near their mouths. And for once, I didn't try to make them.

Parsnip Muffins

One of the first "odd" vegetables I remember getting was parsnips. 2 pounds of parsnips that week.

I am sure that I have heard of parsnips before, but I certainly had no image in my mind of what a parsnip really was.

In case you wonder, a parsnip is sort of like a white carrot. It looks pretty much like a carrot (only white) and it tastes pretty carroty. Except much stronger. I think gamey is a term reserved for meat (like buffalo is supposed to be like beef only more gamey). I think a parsnip is like a carrot, only more gamey.

With our weekly delivery of produce, we get a little newsletter. This one told me that parsnips can be eaten raw or cooked. They are often mashed into potatoes, and used in soups and salads.

Raw? I thought? And like a carrot? So I tried one. I scrubbed it and bit into it. Not bad. I sat down and at just about all of it... until I couldn't stand another bite. Just too strong.

Well, it occurred to me that if it was like a carrot in so many ways, maybe I could make carrot muffins out of it. I was about to get out my carrot cake recipe, when my next thought was to google a recipe for parsnip muffins. I found a GREAT one!  It calls for plain yogurt, which makes the muffins light and fluffy. I made the mistake of putting one extra parsnip in, more than was called for, though. (After all, I had two damn pounds of the suckers to use up!) The muffins ended up a little too parsnip-y (although my opinion is tainted by already being tired of parsnips in the first place).

The final result: I liked the muffins (but I also try not to eat many carbs, so I only ate one or 2 of 2 dozen), my kids refused to eat them. Then, they went bad and we threw the rest away. Was it a success? I have to say it was a very tentative success. The final result was a tasty, light, fluffy muffin. But, we threw away a lot of food.

In case you are interested, here is the recipe. Good luck and enjoy!