Bacon and Parmesan Turnip Fritters

Shredded turnips flavored with freshly grated parmesan cheese and crispy bacon, bound up in these savory fritters, make an excellent dinner side dish or brunch entree.

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Folks, I've got to level with you. Turnips are something I used to endure about a farm share. I've found that some oil and some cheese make them actually quite delightful, and if you throw bacon into that mix my family gets on board, too.

It's funny how eating seasonally from a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share broadens your palate. Over the years I've gone from tolerating beet greens to friskily anticipating my first Sautéed Beet Greens with fried egg brunch plate. I've gone from scratching my head at garlic scapes to popping cubes of garlic scape pesto into all sorts of savory dishes like Shrimp and Garlic Scape Scampi.

Turnips have remained a stubborn nut for me to crack, so to speak. I've had plenty of failures (never made it to the blog, occasionally featured on my FB page) trying to find ways to love these frequently-appearing beasts. I may never crave them, but I'm pretty comfortable with getting turnips in the box now. I've got plenty of options in my toolkit (shared on my Turnip Recipes Collection) and am willing to try new things. My latest, not ready for blog time recipe, is using farm share turnips in a homemade Branston Pickle spread. My son loves it, and it's a meatless sandwich spread for him while he works to lower his bad cholesterol and boost his good cholesterol.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Butter Muffins #MuffinMonday

Whole grain oatmeal muffins sweetened with cookie butter and studded with raisins. It tastes like a treat, and yet it's reasonably wholesome at the same time.  Try these for a super afternoon snack!

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It's no secret I'm a fan of whole grain baked treats for a snack. From my Banana Peanut Butter Cake to an upcoming Really Just As Good For You As A Bowl of Oatmeal Breakfast Cookie (yeah, the name is a work in progress) I just don't see why I can't boost the nutrition of a snack by making it a wee bit more wholesome some of the time. I won't mess with the classics--My Scottish Grandma's Shortbread will not be made with whole wheat flour in my kitchen--but for an after school snack for the kids, why not?

Deep Dish Pizza with Artichokes, Kalamata Olives, and Garlic Scape Pesto

This pizza is layered with mozzarella cheese, marinated artichoke hearts, and kalamata olives tucked under an Italian sausage blanket spread with garlic scape pesto.

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I'm working on refining my "elevator speech", a way to describe what it is I do to people I meet.

In the 30 second version, I'll touch on the flavor of a freshly picked tomato or strawberry vs their store bought counterparts and comment that it's easy to choose to eat locally for the flavor. In the longer version, I'll bring up garlic scapes--one of the more unusual, you've never seen this before therefore it must be locally grown, items in a Spring farm share basket. I specify Spring because, even though you'll only find garlic scapes right after they are harvested in the early part of the growing season--you can put up garlic scapes to enjoy year round.

I'll be giving a talk about local eating at my neighborhood community center in May, and I'm hoping for a couple of garlic scapes to harvest as props. Conveniently I missed a few bulbs of garlic when I harvested last June, and those older established bulbs have a jump on the garlic I planted last October so it's possible I'll have my 'visual aids'. If you're puzzled by what a garlic scape is--it's just what would be the flowering portion of garlic. You can see some gorgeous shots of a scape here on my Garlic Scape Recipe Round Up. I plant my garlic cloves, just like my daddy plants daffodils, in the Fall. Instead of enjoying the pretty flowers, though, I cut off the curly scape while the blossom is still a tight bud, and pulverize those stems for their mild garlic flavor.  With no energy needed to go for a showy floral display, the resulting garlic bulb is bigger--my end goal.

Now, I'll rave about garlic scapes to anyone who will listen, but the way I love them most is in pesto. I will freeze scoops of pesto (I make it thick so it stays in a clump when freezing) for up to a year. Initially I'm hoarding my garlic scape pesto stash, but this time of year I'm seeing the garlic pop up (and sharing it on my Instagram feed) and knowing that scape season is approaching so I can be free and easy with my stash.

This ^^ is all to say that, in this pizza, I used some of my garlic scape pesto as the sauce. If you don't have a stash in your freezer, use any pesto you feel like using. It will be delicious because you made it with love, and that's what matters the most, right?