Rutabaga!

Last night I made a rutabaga & cauliflower mash to go along with our turkey meatloaf. It was....awesome!

To the best of my knowledge I've never had a rutabaga before. They are ugly and sound like something only your great great grandmother would eat. I had wanted to get a parsnip to go with the cauliflower, but the grocery store didn't have any. But they had rutabagas. What the heck, I'll Google it when I get home and see how to cook it and if it tastes gross, I just won't use it. So I looked at all my options and most of them were small but there were a few softball sized ones. Going with the idea that bigger is better, I got a gigantic one. Yeah....it turns out that in the case of rutabagas, big is not always better. You're supposed to buy the small ones. Live and learn. What I learned about them is, the big ones get fibrous and bitter. The small ones are supposed to be tender and sweet. Sweet?! I get so annoyed when I read that things are sweet. Rachel Ray is a terrible offender of saying this. She'd cook a rutabaga and call it sweet. COME ON! It's not sweet. Sugar is sweet. People really need to find another word to use because sweet isn't correct. It's true that cherry tomatoes can be sweet....but rutabagas....no. So annoying. Ok, enough of that. I scrubbed it well because they are really dirty. Then I microwaved the it for 5 minutes to make it easier to remove the outer skin (got this from a website). Then I cut it into chunks and steamed it with the cauliflower for about 25 minutes. It looks very much like a yukon gold potato. It tastes pretty much like a parsnip! Thankfully the one I got wasn't fibrous or bitter. Once tender, I put them in the food processor with some milk and blended them into a "mash". If you didn't know, you'd think it was mashed potatoes just by the look of it. Salt and pepper finished it off. It was yummy! And healthy! It turns out that rutabagas are a powerhouse of vitamins and minerals! Next time you want mashed potatoes, try a rutabaga & cauliflower mash instead. Much better for you.

As a side note, the turkey meatloaf was outstanding! We used up some rosemary crackers in place of breadcrumbs. Had a 10oz bag of spinach so I sautéed that with garlic and added that along with diced onion, yellow bell pepper and some spices. I don't miss the beef and either does Greg. If you can get it past Greg, then it must be good.