Welcome(?) to February! It's the shortest month that feels like the longest month! This year, Home Gardener's Cookbook (Marjorie Page Blanchard, 1974) is here to remind you that spring IS coming.
Just as the book did in January, it primarily gives plans for planting once the weather is more amenable to gardening, but there are a couple of recipes for using up hardy veggies that are maybe still outside-- perhaps under a layer of snow-- or maybe in a root cellar if the home cook is lucky enough to have one.
I thought that Jerusalem Artichoke Pickle might be a recipe for, well, pickles.
But considering that everything is ground up, it sounds more like a relish to me. (Or maybe I don't understand what relish is? Honestly, anything pickled is beyond my realm of understanding.) In any case, the addition of red bell peppers suggests that this is a recipe better made in the summer if you're really intent on using home-grown produce. (To be fair, though, it's better to do all that boiling in the winter! It might be a good trade-off just to buy some red peppers and process the pickles when you want to heat up the house.)
The other recipe sounds more exciting to me-- like a cross between a carrot cake and a pumpkin pie.
Swap out the walnuts for pecans (and maybe cut down on the nutmeg and replace it with some cinnamon and./or ginger), and I'll bet this would be pretty tasty, especially the pop of orange in mid-winter when everything is either brown or covered in snow.
This chapter ends on a hopeful note, promising "We leave February with the vegetable seed order placed in the mailbox to the very faint sounds of the hounds of spring following on winter's traces." Here's to those sounds getting louder!
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