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The Foodie Report
Ruminations on food, cooking in and eating out in our area.


It's entirely possible to be a vegetarian in Porkopolis. Pop culture reporter Lauren Bishop blogs about products, recipes and restaurants she's tried for others who eat meat-free. E-mail her at lbishop@enquirer.com.


Nicci King is an unabashed foodie and the Lifestyle/Food editor in The Enquirer's features department. She loves to discover new food faves, and she's on a daily quest to answer one burning question: What's for dinner? E-mail her at nking@enquirer.com.


Enquirer Weekend editor Julie Gaw tends to order the same dish every time she eats at a restaurant, but periodically ventures out to discover something new and fabulous. After living in China, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Thailand for more than 8 years, she craves tasty Asian food. E-mail her at jgaw@enquirer.com.


Food/dining writer Polly Campbell loves every quirk and secret of Cincinnati's food personality, and is on a constant lookout for something good to eat. Keep an eye out for her restaurant picks, or see how she's progressing toward becoming famous for her apple pie. E-mail her at pcampbell@enquirer.com.


Communities reporter Rachel Richardson is on a mission to prove vegetarians eat more than lettuce. She shares both her graduate work on American food culture and food-related news.. E-mail her at rrichardson@enquirer.com.

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Friday, July 13, 2007

Second chances for slandered vegetables

There are very few vegetables I don't like: mung bean sprouts, plain red radishes (though I will eat them a la francaise, thinly sliced with sweet butter on bread) and -- until recently -- beets.
Sprouts (while packed full of nutrition -- they're like the stem cells of the vegetable world) and radishes are just too bitter for me. My beet aversion dates back to childhood, when a friend's mother was on a canned beets-and-cottage cheese diet. (Hey, it was the '80s. It was a crash diet that didn't work.) She ate them straight from the can, and the earthy smell and texture was overwhelming to my 7-year-old palate. Beets weren't common in my house, so I never tried them again until my French host mother served me a pickled beet salad. It was OK, but I still wasn't on board the beet wagon.
This summer, I have a goal to pick one vegetable I've never cooked or eaten each week. So far, I've discovered that rainbow chard (eaten but never cooked at home) is my new favorite green, kohlrabi is a great in a gratin and mung bean sprouts are tolerable in small doses when doused with a sweet Korean barbecue sauce.
And beets, glorious beets! I'm a fan. I roasted them with olive oil and rosemary from my garden, cooked up some quinoa and mixed grains and sauteed the beet greens. Two hearty nutritious lunches. Beets are high in sugar, but they're fabulous! They're still not as high on my "veggies I heart" list as chard, red peppers or broccoli, but they're a great second-string vegetable. I imagine that this fall, they'll find a place on my table more often.
Are there any vegetables you once loathed that you've learned to love? Any vegetable you just can't stomach?
Are you a fan of bean sprouts? How do you serve sprouts?

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2 Comments:

at 8:01 PM Blogger RadioCarla said...

You're only eating kohlrabi in a gratin? Oh, try it the way I've been eating it since I was 3... peel the fibrous outer edge. Then slice and salt. Yum! Sweet and salty and totally yummy!

Carla

 
at 5:43 PM Blogger Stepfanie said...

Thanks, radiocarla! I couldn't find many recipes for kohlrabi, but I'll give it a chance. I've still got some in my fridge.

 
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