Carrots from the Garden.

This is from someone who has difficulty to eat and has always being picky with her food: I kind of didn't like my Veg. Pushing me to finish my plate was probably something, the worst thing, that someone could do to me. Especially if the threat was: You are not going to bed until you have finished your Carrots...

Chantennay Carrots.

Somehow my salvation as I grew up was learning that not everything had to be cooked in a microwave... I will tell you a tall Tale or a fable: The Mother said 'Eat your Veg' (The Mother felt good by encouraging her child to be healthy). The child looked at the Veg on the plate with dreariness in his or her eyes then pout. Hot and full of water the soggy veg said 'Eat me'... 

Anyhow when the child did learn to cook, it was not soggy any longer, not cutting any corner in a microwave and the Veg turned out to be nice.

Carrots from my Garden.

Nowadays I do grow my Vegetables as well as eating them. One funny instance was when my Mum did get to eat the way I was doing my Carrots. She loved them and asked me for the recipe afterwards. In fact it felt like a bit of a compliment which doesn't really come forward very often with my Mum.

Carrot Spears.

Anyhow to return to our subject of root Vegetables, Potatoes, Carrots and Beetroots are my favourites. I will say that they are the most common but of course I could be entirely wrong being a westerner. If I say Potatoes, I will say in the same token that I grew up eating them. French Fries or Roasties, Boulangére Potatoes or Dauphinoise ones, and the Mash Potatoes... you name it, I ate it.

Charlotte Potatoes, Maris Piper and Vivaldi Potatoes Starters. I grow Potatoes every year but I do change the varieties.

I do find it very satisfying to grow my own Root Vegetables. Of course it does require patience but also because it grows underneath the soil, you do not know what you will get up until the last minute. But I will confess that it is a trepidation which is worth having. One will say that growing your own is always better or taste better. I will agree and disagree with that statement. For the agreement, growing your own allows you to know how the Veg came to be. For example you will know that no pesticide were used. For the disagreement, there are good years and bad years where you can face rot or green Potatoes.

Baby New Potatoes from the Garden.

To confide one thing as I enjoy gardening there is the excitement, the pure ectasy of opening the new catalogue of plants and seeds for the following six months or year. It is just the discovery of new varieties which you could try old or new. Something to grasp the knowledge of: the How do I grow this or that? Then may be there will be the satisfaction to dig up the fruit of your labour and efforts during those past months.

Potato Flower from my Garden. To be honest I never knew what a Potato Flower looked like until I planted a Potato in the ground. It may sound stupid but there was a survey done in nursery and primary schools in Paris (I think it was late eighties or early nineties). It simply asked every child to draw a Fish. The result was overwhelmingly a great array of orange rectangles: The Fish Finger. It was decided then to send the children of the French Capital every year to the coast or/and the mountains to teach them what nature looked like, feels like, and taste like... It was just to give the children back a sense of reality.

With the stupidity of Brexit which was imposed to others, one can count the luck of having a windowsill: Desperate time and desperate measures... I am actually thankful to have a small Garden: it feels like singing the 'Bare Necessities' song of Baloo the Bear in the Jungle Book. Anyhow this year my varieties of Potatoes are chosen for my three bags and I will have two harvests from each so it is not going to be too bad at all.

My Potato Bags.

To go back to growing your own, it is also opening your door to choose varieties of Vegetables, Fruits, Trees and Flowers that you didn't know before. If I can discribe it: it feels like opening your palate to the great outdoors. So for the Plant Catalogue, it is a little like watching discovery Channel for the first time: the 'Oh, not all Beetroot are purple...'

Beetroots. I must say that I didn't have Beetroot Juice until my late twenties... I like it but don't like the colour of my pee afterwards. Once I had to give a pee sample in hospital for something rather important and the purple colour of my pee made me have very apologetic red cheeks. It made the nurses and the Doctor laugh, at the very least.

I still have to grow Chioga Beetroots and Yellow Beetroots... One thing I do like is pickled Beetroots: I know it is very Seventies but we can't go back in and choose another decade. So in 2022 I will have my Beetroots, diced and pickled. And say tough to any who wants to put an up lifted nose and grand air about them. (just giggling).

When I speak about Root Vegetables, so we had my favourite three in the Potatoes, Carrots and Beetroots but the other three I love upon my table are Radishes in Summer, Parsnip in Winter and Mooli all year round.

Mooli from my Garden, washed and trimmed ready to be used.

There is an important word within Root Vegetables and I will say it is Root, because however far away you are from your birth place the Root can be upon your plate to remind you that you are attached to this very world.

Swede

About Swede

Radishes

A Selection of Radishes

Beetroot

A Selection of Beetroots

Celeriac

A Selection of Celeriacs

Water Chestnuts

A Selection of Water Chestnuts

Carrots

A Selection of Carrots.

Potatoes

A Selection of Potatoes