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Contributed by Kathy Caban, May 16, 2005

 

Recipes, Resources and Rutabagas

This page is dedicated to the unappreciated Rutabaga, that ancient and nourishing food of the masses lost in history.

On this page you will find links to:

 Links to featured articles, by date:

  
 

January 22, 2005

Rutabagas, rutabagas, rutabagas!

~by Jennifer L. Fortado

Have you ever seen a rutabaga in the produce aisle of your grocery store?  Ever eaten a rutabaga?  Have you ever seen a recipe for a rutabaga? How are they prepared? Served? What do they taste like? Have you ever tried saying "rutabaga" three times fast without ending-up laughing at yourself?  And how did it get that funny name, "rutabaga"? 

A Rutabaga is a cruciferous european plant (Brassica napus var. napobrassica) having a thick bulbous root used as food and as livestock feed.  The edible part of the plant is the large yellow root.   But there is something about the rutabaga that inspires people to name things after it: 

  1. There is an on-line interactive game named after the rutabaga:  Rutabaga Paradox

  2. An episode of the TV-series, Green Acres, was named after the rutabaga:  "The Rutabaga Story" (first aired 3/20/1968)

  3. The rutabaga was immortalized by Carl Sandburg's short tale "How They Broke Away to Go to the Rootabaga Country."

    "And so if you are going to the Rootabaga Country you will know when you get there, because the railroad tracks change from straight to zigzag, the pigs have bibs on and it is the fathers and mothers who fix it.  And don't forget your "long slick yellow leather slab ticket with a blue spanch across it."

  4. That said, the French agree that the rutabaga is edible, but don't think it's fit for human consumption.

  5. There is even a website called The Advanced Rutabaga Studies Institute that features links to poetry such as the following:

    I got rutabaga skins for the clothes that I wear.
    Rutabaga extract to wash my hair.
    Rutabaga vapor instead of gas.
    Rutabaga paper to wipe my ... nose.

    Do the rutabaga boogie.
    Come along with me.
    With a fresh rutabaga pulled right off the tree.

    Do the rutabaga boogie.
    Do it all the time.
    With a fresh rutabaga pulled right off the vine.

So what makes the Rutabaga so special?  While I can't answer this question for everyone, I can tell you that its one of those important things, lost to history, that perhaps deserves a little more attention and respect than it receives.  For example, the rutabaga is one of the oldest cultivated foods.  5000 years ago, before the invention of cultivation, these fat yellow turnips sustained early foraging people.  There is even evidence of prehistoric man roasting and eating rutabagas ~ on the ancient cave paintings in France.  The ancient Greeks and Romans cultivated and ate them.  They were known as the "potato of ancient cuisine", famous for nourishing the poor.  But then, as the story goes, someone in the noble class of one European society decided that the rutabaga (and all turnips for that matter) were beneath them, good only for feeding the poor.  Doesn't that just figure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Updated 11/10/2005
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