Rutabaga

So we tried a recipe from a Williams Sonoma cookbook for Sweet Potato Rutabaga Mash. I enjoyed it quite a bit, I will definitely try it other recipes. It had a familiar taste that I could not nail down. Here is the recipe if any one is interested:

1 lb of sweet potato peeled and cut into 1 inch slices
1/2 lb of rutabaga peeled and cut into 1 inch slices
1 tsp minced thyme
1/4 cup chicken stock
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp heavy cream
salt and pepper

Bake sweet potatos, rutabaga, thyme, chicken stock, and S/P at 350 degrees for 1 hour 15 min, until soft. Remove from dish and mash in a bowl with butter and cream. Salt and pepper as needed.

Lessons learned:
Be sure to peel enough of the rutabaga skin off otherwise the mash will be lumpy.
When choosing a rutabaga at the store it should be smooth, firm, and heavy.

Quinoa--- try again

Brian I am going to disqualify your Quinoa. Sorry! I new it sounded familiar and last night discovered why. My co-worker uses this grain in a cold veggie salad. It was tasty. I think everyone should try it, but it should be a second tier ingredient not the main.

Love me some food

I love it. Also I think the google doc is a great idea for recipes. More accessible than a blog to retrieve, share, print etc. I think a source that we can search would be great and control/command "f" would allow that to happen. We can look for ingredients that way too. Who wants to admin? I would be happy to, unless it is already in the works. 

So Happy

Thank you Lauren and Ryan for making this happen. It is going to be one delicious year!

Ancillary Idea

After a delightful Thanksgiving, including candy making, I got to thinking that it would be great if we could consolidate all of our family recipes. Since most of us are on google, I thought we could start with a google doc that we could share. I am open to other suggestions. Google workspaces is another option. I thought about just a blog, but worry that it would get too hard to find stuff.

Love the idea!!!!

Lauren- this is great. I gladly accept the challenge and will cheat just a bit for next month. Sara and I tried an ingredient in just one dish, but we didn't get it quite right. It is becoming very popular because of its nutritional value and long term storage. It is spelled QUINOA and pronounced Keen-wa. I will provide more detail later.

Welcome

So here it is, Ryan and I watch quite a bit of TV food programing (Top Chef, Iron Chef America, Kitchen Nightmares... to name a few) and I know we aren't the only ones - we often ask ourselves and one another "I wonder what that tastes like?" or "what in the world is fois gras"

Back in November when mom came to visit and help out with Annie, we were sitting around perusing a new cookbook we picked up. As we looked through we realized there are so many foods we know NOTHING about, and thanks to Wikipedia we were able to educate ourselves a bit.

So...

I propose an Experiment for 2009. The 2008 Christmas gift exchange was a cooking gadget and to go along with that, I would like us to try a new food every month. I would like everyone to choose an ingredient, find a recipe that incorporates the ingredient, fix the recipe and share their findings. I thought a blog where everyone is an author would be a nice forum to share the recipes - good or bad. A picture might be nice as well.
Here are a few guidelines I have thought of:
1. Must be a raw ingredient (i.e. a fruit, vegetable, protein, spice) you have NEVER eaten or cooked with before. (perhaps you have tried it in a restaurant and now you want to try it at home)
2. 12 months in a year - 12 people/adults in our family, therefore everyone is assigned a month

• January: Lauren
• February: Brian
  
• March: Andrea
• April: Dad
• May: Caren
• June: David
• July: Quinn
  
• August: Mom
• September: Jonathan
• October: Sara
  
• November: Ryan
• December: Scott

Around the first of the month just log onto the blog and post the ingredient of choice.
3. The ingredient should be seasonal and not region specific - the goal is for everyone to be able to find the food.
4. Have fun and be adventurous :)
5. Everyone is an author to this blog so you don't have to 'comment' you can create your own posts - if you need help figuring out how to do this, I would love to help.

Hopefully at the end of the year we will be able to look back and realize we have grown a little, preferably not just our waistlines.

I know there isn't much time left in January so if you can't get to it this month I understand - but the food I choose is...
Rutabaga - The rutabaga, swede, or yellow turnip is a root vegetable that originated as a cross between the cabbage and the turnip. (Wikipedia.com, Jan 2009)