5 Tips to Feed Your Family From the Farm Share {Roasted Celeriac and Potatoes}

What do I do if my kid/spouse/guinea pig* won't eat _______ [insert name of vegetable]?

I hear from folks who join Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm shares that a prime concern is family members not liking particular vegetables. When we started eating from a farm share my kids were 6 and 8. The older one liked potatoes and occasionally tolerated baby carrots and apple slices [unless he absolutely loved them or abhorred them. It changed. A lot. Since his congenital brain malformation--Chiari, if you're wondering--comes along with a wicked gag reflex, he'd lose the contents of his stomach when forced to 'eat just one bite'. We learned to cut our losses. Probably TMI.] The younger one ate broccoli stems for fun and hadn't met a fruit she didn't like. My spouse? He's spent a year eating in Korea, a year eating in Iraq, and has been eating my cooking for nearly two decades. Awww . . . we've got an anniversary this year . . . but the point is he'll eat anything.

You'll notice only green things are left on his tray. He didn't like green back then.

When we started getting cabbage (a typical early season green) it went smoothly. Sautéed with a little salt and pepper, shown in my Simple Sautéed Chinese Cabbage, it was a hit with my girl and tolerable to my boy. Then the eggplant appeared. How on earth was I going to get that into them? In desperation I roasted everything roastable [is that a word?] from that box (NOT shown below, I wasn't blogging way back in 2006) and made spaghetti sauce. It worked! They ate it!

a typical late summer box

That recipe--the first one I ever posted on the internet [you can see it here at tastykitchen] opened my mind to the possibilities of produce. I could add some sort of pun thinking outside the farm share box, but I won't. In the ensuing years--I've just signed up for our 10th season--I picked up a couple of tips through friends, relatives, and trial and error. No tricks, though--I've always been aboveboard with my family about what we're eating.  They don't even ask if there are beets in the smoothie anymore, they just drink it. 

A few lessons learned (and then a recipe):

1. Combine new vegetables with old familiar ones in old familiar recipes. Since my spouse grew up in Pasty Country (the Upper Peninsula of Michigan) we eat a lot of meat pies. My Beef and Bok Choy Pie (recipe here) and Turnip Tamale Pie (not live on the blog yet) as well as today's recipe are examples to taking something known and adding a new vegetable.

2. If you're going to sauté onion for a dish, add in some finely chopped carrots and celery. If you'd use onion, peppers and celery, why not add in some finely chopped radishes? Not many people would choose to add carrots and radishes to a potato salad, but if you've got them in the crisper, why not toss them in? It makes for a colorful side dish and eating your colors is supposed to be good for you.

3. When in doubt with zucchini or yellow squash--shred, shred, shred. You can stuff these shredded vegetables into taco meat, meatloaf, enchiladas, and more. You can freeze packages of shredded vegetables for later use. I freeze mine in 2 cup measures because the cell walls break as a part of the freezing/thawing process, and once you squeeze out all the fluid you've got about half what you started with.

4. When in doubt about eggplant, beets, tomatoes (yes, you can be overrun with ripe summer tomatoes)--roast, roast, roast. Cube vegetables and toss with olive oil, salt and pepper, and roast at 425 degrees Fahrenheit until tender. (Or slow roast your tomatoes separately). You can even freeze packages of roasted summer vegetables for winter spaghetti sauce--I'll have a post about that up eventually. Here's how I make CSA Vegetable Spaghetti Sauce.

5. Things go better with ketchup. Maybe not everything, but if a big squirt of ketchup helps your teen to chow down on her first exposure to celeriac? Why not? When my now-teens tell me that the spaghetti sauce 'needs more eggplant' or my son fixes a dish using Swiss chard, I figure I'm doing something right.

Now that I've got that off my brain, it's time for a recipe.  We got celeriac in the Fall farm share.  This one was a new one to our family.  It looks even more freaky than a kohlrabi. What the heck do I do with this? I decided to follow Tip #1 and roasted it up with some potatoes. Served alongside fish, with a healthy dose of ketchup (Tip#5) my son liked it. My spouse and daughter thought it tasted weird but ate it anyway.  

Roasted Celeriac and Potatoes

1 pound potatoes, cubed (I left the skins on, especially to show they weren't all the same vegetable)

1 large celeriac, peeled and cubed

2 Tablespoons olive oil

about ½ teaspoon salt plus more to taste

about ½ teaspoon pepper (I'm grinding and just eyeballing this) plus more to taste

ketchup--if desired for serving

Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. In a large bowl, toss potatoes and celeriac with olive oil. Transfer to a rimmed baking sheet and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast for 15 minutes, then stir the pan. Roast for another 15 minutes and check for tenderness. Mine are usually ready at this point, but if your chunks are bigger, pop it back in for another 10-15 minutes. Taste a piece and add more salt and pepper if you prefer. Serve with ketchup if desired.

*I didn't forget about the pigs! When we rescued our guinea pigs the Metropolitan Guinea Pig Rescue supplied us with a wealth of charts showing the variety and frequency to feed a whole host of vegetables and fruits to guinea pigs. I can email you a copy if you like. 

If you can, rescue a pair of guinea pigs for your living room, and feed them from the farm share. /rant