Arabic Pickled Turnips

As promised – pickles. These are pickles I grew up eating, turnip pickles dyed fuchsia with the addition of a beet. Perfect for this box – one small beet, all your turnips and a clove of that fresh garlic. This recipe actually comes by way of ABC. Diane Sawyer made a trip to Syria and brought back turnip pickles – the folks on “The Chew” provided a recipe to make these stateside.

Jenn Robbins’ Purple Kohlrabi Slaw

Jenn Robbins of Avalon Catering created this recipe to showcase colorful purple kohlrabi. It’s just as delicious with the more common green variety but it’s perfect for the purple variety which loses its lovely color when it’s cooked.

Slaw wasn’t her only idea for using this vegetable. “I love kohlrabi! It creams beautifully with the greens mixed in, goes great in a potato salad dressed with a lemon vinaigrette, we also shave it and mix it into chicken salad, use it in our cold weather glazed/scalloped vegetable dish and I have even seen a peer make kohlrabi kraut,” she said. So now you’ve got lots of other ideas for your kohlrabi.

Easy Lemon Basmati Rice with Green Onions and Parsley

Hmmm …. guess I’m on a green onion binge. Well, here’s one more idea.

I’m spending a lot of time at my main job looking at magazines that focus on health. I’ve really come to appreciate little Prevention magazine and you’re also going to be seeing a lot of their recipes this year. This one comes from their book “Quick and Healthy Low-Fat Cooking.”

Pickled Spring Onions

First, a warning. You’re going to get lots of pickle recipes this year. Not sure why, but I’m on a pickling binge. And you can pickle anything. Really. These are going to be refrigerator pickles – really just seasoned vegetables that you can keep refrigerated for up to a month or so. Lots of health benefits from pickles and fermented vegetables, so I hope you’ll enjoy them.

Justin Burdett of Miller Union demonstrated this recipe at the Peachtree Road Farmers Market just about a year ago. Put up some of those pretty green onions you got today. Won’t be long before they’ll just be a fond memory.

Justin called for champagne vinegar, which sounds a bit more decadent that it really is. It’s pretty reasonably priced, but you could substitute white wine vinegar or even apple cider vinegar and still get good results. He also cools the brine before pouring it over the vegetables – that keeps the green onions from turning olive green right away and preserves the fresh flavor a little more. Since the green onions are tender, they don’t need even the little bit of cooking that happens when you pour boiling liquid over your vegetables. And it also means these are absolutely, positively refrigerator pickles. No sitting around at room temperature for these savory bits.