My Mother's Veggies

                Dinner tonight is one of my late winter, early spring favorites—a simple baked dish of fennel, parsnips, leeks, and potatoes, roughly chopped, married with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic, and baked in the oven in an old casserole with a lid. I was struck, this evening, by the differences between my veggie drawer and my mothers.

                My mother was a good cook of her time. She knew how to use garlic and onions, salt,  and pepper.  She was ahead of her time, experimenting with  Chinese cuisine for a dinner party. But, her range of vegetables was limited.  She kept onions and potatoes in the under the sink, carrots, celery, iceburg lettuce and pink tomatoes in the fridge, broccoli, spinach, and peas in the freezer, and canned corn and lots of tomatoes in the cabinet. Occasionally she peeled and boiled a hubbard squash, which was always deemed “wet.” For Thanksgiving, she cooked creamed pearl onions to rest next to her excellent stuffing. We had the occasional—and, in my mind, disgusting—Boiled Dinner, where cabbage and turnips were boiled to death with corned beef. There were apples, oranges, and bananas.

                We still eat most of these veggies, except for the boiled cabbage and pink tomatoes,  but we have added so many more. We eat fresh greens—kales, mustards, chard, argula, cabbage—all winter long. In spring, we add asparagus and mushrooms with fresh eggs. Summer is the feasting season with tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, broccoli,  green beans, zucchini…And then fall brings in the heavy squashes and root crops of potatoes, beets, carrots, and parsnips. Our palate has expanded, mostly because of the garden. Parsnips and kale grow well here. I had to learn how to cook them.  Now, I cannot imagine my kitchen without them, in season.

                I am glad my mother fed me her full range of vegetables as a child. I was never allowed to be picky; I had to eat what she put on my plate, even if it was boiled turnips.   I remember her kitchen when I lift down her cheerful casserole dish which we used—still use—for baked mac and cheese and toss my mixture of veggies in.