VV middle class but ashamed to say 'what is this feckin thing in my veg box?'

[WilfSell]

It is round, turnip/swede sized, purple and has sprouty sticky up bits pointing upwards, which obviously originally had leaves on but have been cut off by the nice man from the organic food shop...

Is it perhaps a kohlrabi (best guess)? Oh I know I could google but I just thought I'd give you all a laugh at my shameful ignorance.

And WTF do I do with it?

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Oh yes, its a kohlrabi.

Tastes of nothing.

I usually put it straight in the compost.

HTH

Might be a big beetroot? But kohlrabi does sound more likely.

Shred it and mix it with lots of mayo.

Lots of mayo improves most things, except for one's spare tyre.

You cant be serious? Compost it?

peel it, cut it to pieces, boil it, MASH it (but not to puree or mashed potato texture, keep it a little rougher) and season with a little salt and pepper. It has a very full on flavour. Goes very well with meat, such as a meatloaf, with sausages, etc.

Or, use it an a stew.

Cube carrots, potatoe and kholrabi. chop a handful of spring onion. Add garlic. Put on the side.

Cube pork, boil for an hour, add carrots, potatoes and kohlrabi, springonion and garlic. Add some rosemary, thyme, sage and basilicum, season with salt and pepper.
Cook gently for nearly an hour till all the veg are nearly dissolved and the herbes will have "cooked in".

Totally delicious (but rustic)

kohlrabi is also very nice raw. I eat it like an apple. Popular snack for children in Germany - bit like carrots sticks or whatever.

From the picture I'd have to say cook a nice meal from real food, then place Kohlrabi on table & use it as a centre piece.

Very pretty.. but not convinced my DD would swap her carrot sticks for it.

i want to try veg boxes but im so rubbish i wouldnt know what to do with anything!

Ah yes, DA, that is exactly what it looks like. DS2 (who is 3.5) whose favourite colour is purple and whose favourite thing at the moment is spaceships (alternating weekly with elephants, dinosaurs and chocolate) is utterly made up but can't understand that it is for eating and not constructing long-winded storygames with...

Mashing sounds good.

Actually we're new to the veg box too and as DH wryly commented 'why don't we just put the 14 quid straight in the bin and save the fridge electricity and then we'll still be doing our bit?' I suspect we might not last too long.

This was a demo box and was lovely - new potatoes, kiwi fruit, cabbage greens, the purple thing and lots more but I'm sure once we sign up it will just be lots of crappy lettuce and manky potatoes?

Boxes we've had have been pretty consistent. It's handy to have a kind of A-Z cookbook when you get veg boxes, then you just look up the ingredient. I have a battered old copy of the Sainsbury's Book of Food, which is just pictures of food with labels, essentially - that plus this really helps use stuff up. And when in doubt - soup.

I have to say we have abandoned our box. DP doesn't really believe in veg. Which means that I got stuck with the job of cooking my way through an entire bloody box when it's my turn to cook, and it all got a bit much.

We are now Thinking Outside The Box (oh ho ho ho, hilarious, moi)and get, er, the odd bit of salad augmented rather often with what veg is lurking in the freezer.

We still get a fruit box, though.

I've abandoned the veg box too. I just can't be creative enough after a day at work to cook the veg in the box, I end up with half the box left at the end of the week.

I am jealous. I haven't had kohlrabi in my box for ages and I think it's lovely . I like it raw in salad with a nice lemony dressing. Mind you dp and ds1 won't touch it, as with any other remotely 'strange' vegetable, so I often find myself in the same position as motherinferior used to be.

Update: having rather a lot of rapidly sagging veg, I made a cheesy bake thing (think cauliflower cheese but without the cauliflower) with sauted potatoes on top. DS1 ate the kohlrabi without blinking (heh heh heh).

A touch of mustard in the cheese sauce does the trick...

trefusis-that site looks great for a rubbish cook like me!

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I have an Abel and Cole cookbook "Cooking out of the box" or similar which is really useful for cooking with your organic veg box.

I am a convert to veg box schemes, after avoiding them because I didn't know what half the vegetables were, I now see it as a challenge to never waste any of the contents. I am really keen now on quite a few veg I wouldn't have dreamed of buying 2 years ago. I still don't always know the names of things but most things can be added into either salad/stir fry/roast/soup.

And I love organic lettuce, it's so different from shop-bought non-organic lettuce. have even started growing it myself now.