Out of the garden and into the soup!

I’ve been carefully watering and watching my turnips, and noticed one growing a little faster than the others. A couple of days ago, I noticed a little crack in that beautiful turnip. Time to pull him up!

He had strong green tops. Who knew you could eat the tops of turnips?

I gave him a good washing and chopping, then added him in with some potatoes and chicken that I was roasting for dinner. Next, I chopped up the turnip greens.

I pulled out a hambone from the freezer, then sat down and googled, “hambone soup turnip greens”. After reading through this recipe for inspiration, I came up with my own hambone soup recipe.

Hambone Soup

• 1 hambone with some bonus meat on it
• 1.5 cups of baked black beans (from my freezer)
• 3 stalks of celery, chopped
• 3 carrots, peeled and chopped
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1/4 cup of butter
• 1.5 cups of greens (used turnip greens and kale)
• 4 small potatoes, peeled and chopped
• water

In a stockpot (mine is a 6-qt), melt the butter. Sauté the celery, carrots, and onions until they are nice and soft. Add the hambone, and cover with water. Throw in beans. Simmer for 1.5 hours, uncovered. Skim off any yuck from the top, and add the potatoes and greens. Simmer for 30 minutes more.

We ate ours with some brown rice and crusty sourdough bread. Delicious. Its highest praise – my daughter, who generally isn’t interested in dinner, loved the broth. WINNER!

I think the best part of the whole thing was that we were eating something from our own garden. Planting the seeds, watching them grow, and eating the greens of our first turnip of the season. I suppose it’s telling that this process is so exciting for us – it’s not a regular every-day part of our lives. Here’s to hoping it will be from now on.