The last Riverview veggie box of the year and I’m late! Hope everyone picked up their box last night. I ran by my pickup location at the usual time yesterday, but of course, the delivery hadn’t been made. Traffic was so awful yesterday I don’t know how the truck ever made its way to town and all its stops. I was giving a dinner party so it was about 10pm before I was able to go back out and gather my box. And then I promptly fell into bed. Today has been a crazy work day, so here I am, finally, 24 hours later contemplating a box that has two things I’ve never seen in a Riverview box before – ginger and rice.
I wonder where the ginger came from. More and more farmers are growing it here, a real upward trend since the first time I saw local ginger at a farmers market in 2013. I wrote about it in the AJC at the time and interviewed the farmer who grew it because she had seen ginger root in the discarded vegetables at her local Publix and thought she’d give it a try. It needs a long season, so lots of farmers these days are growing it in hoop houses to give it an early start. We could all grow it too if we decided to put some in a pot in early spring and then nurse it through the summer.
One sign the ginger is really fresh is the dark spots along one edge. Those are the bottoms of the growing stalks – 3-foot and more tall stems. And the skin of the ginger? Totally moist and fresh looking. Really – no need to peel this ginger at all.
What will you do with yours? I’ll grate some into the cranberry relish I’ll be making tomorrow and the rest? Maybe grate some into the carrot cake I’m making? My favorite thing to do with whatever’s left (before the rhizome dries out) is to make a simple syrup (equal parts granulated sugar and water, brought to a boil to dissolve the sugar) and then steep the ginger scrapings into the hot syrup. Cover it, let it cool, then strain out the ginger pieces. Now you have something that’s delicious to sweeten coffee or tea, perfect with a fruit salad (ginger-scented ambrosia, anyone?) and sometimes I just stir it into a glass of ice water with fresh lemon juice. Ginger lemonade with almost no work.
It was exciting to see the rice. While we may not know where the ginger came from, we do know about the rice. Tellico Plains, Tennessee. Looks like it’s not far north of Blue Ridge and just on the edge of the Nantahala National Forest. I think of rice as growing in the coastal parts of our country where rivers and large creeks provide ample water for irrigation, and it looks like Tellico Plains is crisscrossed with small waterways and built on the Tellico River, but it’s definitely in the foothills of the Appalachians so not on the Gulf, the Mississippi or a South Carolina sea Island. I would love to know who’s growing rice there.
I like that it’s brown rice. Can’t wait to cook up something delicious with it. Given that there’ll be Thanksgiving turkey leftovers available in a few days, I’ll probably make a turkey and rice casserole as that’s something my household really enjoys. I’ll add some of those beautiful carrots from the box as well.
I leave you and 2019 with a last link to all the recipes we’ve posted on Riverview’s website for dozens of ways to eat up that cornmeal. The Sweet Cornbread for Thanksgiving was adapted from Laurel’s Kitchen, the first vegetarian cookbook I bought back in the 1970s. I think it was actually the first cookbook I bought ever. Newly launched into a college apartment, I needed a guide to cooking that was different from the food I grew up with. It’s still a staple in my kitchen although my copy certainly looks shabby. I see Amazon has hard cover copies available for $165. 🙂
But I’ve been asked to make bread dressing this year, so instead of my Thanksgiving cornbread, I’ll make Upside Down Skillet Corn Cake as part of my dessert spread (along with that ginger-scented carrot cake). And cornmeal scones for breakfast on Friday.
Hope everyone enjoys a Thanksgiving that meets their personal requirements for food, family and friends. Talk to you next year.