Category: Weirdo of the Week

We can hear it now. You’re saying “what do I do with this lumpy alien troll beast in my share?!” More politely, this excellent article from NPR calls it “the vegetable world’s ugly duckling”. Don’t panic, friends, at the sight of this week’s truly weird weirdo! Celeriac may have the look of ogre skin at first glance,…

It’s about this time of year when cans of cranberry sauce and pumpkin puree start gracing the ends of grocery store aisles. Do you know what’s really in many of those cans of pumpkin though? Butternut squash! It’s true; the USDA is pretty lax on their definition of pumpkin, and so long as the veg inside falls under…

Boy, oh boy, I am so excited we finally get to talk about leeks! I have got some serious love for these mouth watering alliums. These beauties may seem intimidating, but I promise you, they are no harder to prepare than their onion cousins. Now, I can hear you thinking “but how do I clean these…

I’ll be honest, one of my favorite broccoli recipes involves cheese, mayo and Pillsbury crescent dough. I said it! “Dough” from a can. There are no redeeming health benefits to this dish, despite broccoli’s high fiber and vitamin C content, but man, does it taste good. “Broccoli stuff”, as we call it, begins with the aforementioned dough…

So I must live under a rock, or I wouldn’t have missed potatostock 2014. This guy asked kickstarter for $10 to make potato salad and raised nearly $56,000! That’s a lot of potato salad. What sounded like a joke ended up as a huge assist for Central Ohio non-profits working to end hunger and homelessness, a…

I’ll be honest. I hated trying to eat anything with eggplant while I was growing up. Right up there with zucchini, it was. It looked weird and tasted like unidentifiable vegetable pretending to be meat. Thank goodness those dark ages are over! Now that I know what to do to tame these purpley beasts, I…

Summer squash, so called due to their short (relative to winter squash) shelf life and delicate skins, always seem to boom ‘till we’re almost up to our necks in them, then poof! No more zucchini and yellow squash. How to keep that bounty interesting, you ask? Here we go! Here’s a crazy sounding mock apple crisp,…

With names like Cherokee Purple and Malachite Box, heirloom tomatoes certainly fit the bill for being true weirdos. Plus, check out that skin! Those aren’t unripe tomatoes folks, but the natural hue for these funky fruits. Some of those purpley red Cherokees do have some slightly unripe green shoulders, but they catch up with the rest of the…

“What on Earth are those weird pig tail shaped green things?” you might very well be asking this week. Those pig tails are garlic scapes, the stalks of undeveloped flowers that are emerging from each growing garlic bulb. Why take them off the garlic? For one, they are delicious, plus once those flower stalks are…