 Two vegetables that aren't particularly common on Oklahoma's tables, but maybe should be our turnips and rutabagas. Now rutabagas we don't grow very much in Oklahoma because the plants are damaged and the rutabagas themselves are damaged if the temperature gets over 75 degrees, so most of those are grown actually in Canada that are eaten in the United States. Ruta bagas and turnips are related. They're also related to other cruciferous vegetables such as cabbage, brussel sprouts, broccoli, and as a result of that they have some of the same characteristics. And one of the reasons that we don't see a lot of the montables is because they have very strong flavors. Now turnips have less strong flavors than rutabagas will, and you can do some things to keep those flavors mild. Some of the same things that we did with other cruciferous vegetables. Now in order to get these started, let's look at what we have here. This one is a turnip and you notice that it's got the wide end and it usually has a purplish end, although not always. Most of them that are sold and harvested, you have without the tops, they've been topped because the greens that come with the turnip that we often eat during the summertime will cause the moisture and the liquid to be drawn out of the root itself and it'll get very mushy. Now when you're looking for these, you want them to be firm, you want them to be fairly heavy for their size, but you don't want them to be very big because the bigger they are, the more likely they're going to be tough. Or perhaps do have a natural sweetness as do rutabagas and they've been around for probably about 4,000 years. Now when you want to get these ready, most often they're going to be peeled. You can if you have a very young one, you can cook it with the peeling on, but as I said most of them will be taken off. You then take a vegetable pair because you want to get as little of the peeling off as you can and a little, as little of, well you all of the peeling, but as little of the vegetable underneath as possible. If you have one that's larger, you may want to cut it in half before you start to peel it so that you can get a little bit better hand hold on it. Now these you don't want to cook very long, probably just until they're tender because the longer they cook, just like broccoli and Brussels sprouts and cabbage, the stronger the flavor is going to get. So if you don't like them to begin with, you may want to try eating them raw when the flavor is very mild and again children are often going to be able to eat them that way, serving them as cruditees or on a vegetable plate is a real good idea. Now the rutabagas a little bit different. It hasn't been around quite as long and they're often sold waxed. If you look at this one real closely, you can see that there's wax on the peel. I can run my fingernail down that. Now that's to keep the moisture in during storage. They are more dense and they have less moisture than turnips so that they will keep longer, but they do have that wax on them too and you do need to take that off. Now again these come anywhere from smaller size than this up to anywhere around 50 pounds. They've been known to grow that big. But larger ones again are going to be more fibrous, less sweet and not as good to eat. Now on these you get a good knife and you cut one end off. Then you can cut down on one side removing just enough that you have a flat area to work with and then they don't roll around. Not a much of a problem on the smaller ones but on the bigger ones it can be. We then want to cut it again getting as many flat edges as possible. And then you can take a paring knife and peel it down. You may want to go as much as a quarter and then just peel it off with a paring knife. The vegetable paring won't work with the root of aega. Notice that the flesh is quite a bit more yellow than the turnip. It can be anywhere from white to yellow. It does have more beta carotene in it than the turnip will which basically has none. They both can also have a fair amount of vitamin C but that's if they're raw. If you cook them then you'll probably be down to about a quarter of the amount you originally had. Now I do have an example of a product that is using turnips. Most of the things that you find with turnips you can substitute root of aega. If you are a novice at eating either of these this is a good dish because it doesn't have a lot in it. The root of aega do have a stronger flavor. It's also sweeter because it's sweeter. It's also got a few more calories in it because that sweetness comes from sugar. Now we have here two medium onions and about two large carrots cut up and I brown them in two tablespoons of vegetable oil. To that I'm going to add three cups of diced tomatoes. If you still have fresh that's fine. Otherwise this is a good time to use some of your canned ones. About a cup to a cup and a half of shredded cabbage. Now remember this is a stew. It's a harvest stew so that the mounts can vary. We've got about one large or two small yellow croquette squash. I'm going to add into that also a half a cup of raisins. One medium turn up, a teaspoon of cinnamon, half a teaspoon of cumin and you can either use a teaspoon of fresh grated ginger or I'm going to use a half a teaspoon of dried ginger. This is going to be put onto the range and simmered until the turnips are just tender because we don't want them to overcook. Probably take you about 20 minutes to do that. After simmering for about 20 minutes and stirring, oh fairly often, you end up with a stew. Now you may have to add a little bit of water to it. This is a little bit sweeter than some of the things that you may have expected. You remember I said turnips themselves. It's actually do have some sweetness to them and you can add either sweet spices or savory herbs whenever you cook them. This particular one has the sweet spices added to it. We're going to garnish this with a few slivered almonds and then you serve that with some crusty bread or some cornbread and you have a nice lunch to that. Now for those people who are more familiar with turnips and can get past the raisins adding sweetness and all those kinds of things to kind of introduce yourself to them. For the real turnip lover, we have a turnip and onion casserole that again the turnips are sliced very thinly but these are baked with a little bit of liquid in the form of chicken broth so that you can pick up the more of that flavor to the actual turnip itself because there's more of it there. If you'd like these recipes, contact your county extension office for Opel Homo Gardening. This is Barbara Brown.