I Love All Vegetables Except for One...

When I was a kid, I was kind of a picky eater.  I didn't like mustard greens, spinach, brussels sprouts, or any number of other vegetables.  I didn't venture out much from green beans, petit pois peas and carrots.  I know many young people are the same.  I don't know at what point my taste buds changed or my vegetable horizons broadened, but I absolutely love vegetables now - even semi-weird stuff like kale, chard, and bok choy.  Don't get me wrong, I love to eat meat, but I like to have a bunch of side dishes consisting of good homegrown vegetables.

There is one vegetable; however, that I just don't like.  Turnips.  Believe me, I have tried to like them. I've tried to cook them different ways - roasting it, boiling it, making a few different recipes with it. I've tried picking them when they are young and tender before they develop a strong taste.  I've tried to fool myself into thinking it is a potato, but it's to no avail.  I just don't like the taste.

I still grow the doggone things though.  I have a full row of them planted. Additionally, the other day while harvesting the sweet potatoes, there were a few turnips that had come up volunteer.  I pulled the big turnip root out of the loose soil and admired the turnip greens.  Now, I can eat the turnip greens, but not the roots.

Even though I can't eat them, there's someone (or a few someones) than can eat the roots, though! Those ol cows of ours...  They love both the roots and the greens.

I stood at the garden fence and pulled our three or four mature turnips and fed them the greens.  I then took the big old turnip roots and cut them up with my pocketknife and fed chunks of turnip to those girls.

They loved them.  To show their appreciation, they belched.  It was a nasty smelling turnip belch that stunk up the place with the foulest of odors and made me stop feeding them turnips and shoo them away.  They need to learn some manners. Goodness gracious!

As I mentioned I have a full row of turnips planted primarily for the cows.  They should mature in late January and the cows will look forward to me picking turnips and feeding them that.  I'll likely thin out the row now and then by pulling and eating the tender turnip greens.  I don't know, I might even try eating some young turnips to see if my taste buds have changed this year.