Here we find ourselves in the middle of ‘the hunger gap,’ that time between when the fresh local food surviving from the fall runs out and when the new season of growing and harvesting begins. So, we make do with slightly old bits of cabbage and things that look okay at the supermarket and which have, with any luck, not traveled the length or breadth of the continent to be found on our plates.
We have our own micro hunger gap at our house. We get a box of fresh vegetables – sometimes organic, sometimes local, sometimes both, from our Organic Sue, but only every two weeks since there is, for most of the time, only two eaters in our house. So, we have this period nearing the end of the veg box, but too close to the new one to go and get anything from the store where the pickings get pretty slim.
I will tell you now that I am extremely lucky and I know I am and I am grateful for it. My daughter, who is not quite four, will eat pretty much any vegetable. She has been known to respond to the to myself mumble, ‘what should we have for supper?’ by saying, ‘I think some salad would be nice.’
It was this comment that led us to search through the fridge drawers, thirteen days after our last bi-weekly veg box delivery, in hopes of putting something together to encourage those sorts of comments and behaviour.
What we found: ½ an avocado left over from Tilly’s lunch 2 days ago (and, no, not local by any stretch but good for my baby), 2 inches of cucumber (slightly mushy so decided the compost was really the best place for that), 3 button mushrooms, handful of carrots, ½ red cabbage, 5 chioggia beets, some fennel (purchased because of giant fronds to replace dill in another cooking escapade), 3 ribs of celery (on the limper side of life), a bunch of kale missing a few leaves due to colour addition to one meal or another earlier in the week, one very soft and sprouty red onion and 2 lost parsnips which were obviously missed in the last baby ‘stew’ making effort. Grim, I thought. But, that not quite past it red cabbage spoke to me. ‘Coleslaw, Poppy?’ I asked, hoping.
‘Yabut, not the white kind that comes with fish and chips though, right?’ was the reply.
‘Okay, we can not do that kind,’ I promised.
Hunger Gap Slaw – this does take a bit of prep time unless your beets are already cooked.
5 medium beets – we used Chioggia, the stripy ones, but anything will work.
1 bunch kale – any sort will do
3 large carrots
½ head red cabbage
½ bulb fennel
½ cup toasted pumpkin seeds (or sunflower seeds or sliced almonds)
Wrap beets in foil and roast at 325° until tender. Peel as soon as you can handle them. Slice or cut into wedges depending on the size of your beets. You don’t even have to cook the beets, if you don’t want to. You can peel and cut them into a fine julienne and they will be lovely although you may not want to use all five in that case.
De-stem the kale.You can usually do this by grabbing the leafy green, or purple, bit at the bottom and pulling up and away from the hard ‘spine’. Steam the leaves just until tender, 5-10 minutes or so. When it is cool enough to handle, gently squeeze any extra water out and chop it into bite size bits.
Peel and slice the carrots. I used the vegetable peeler for little ribbons, but this can be finicky. Pressed for time, I would just grate them. For something more uniform, I would finely julienne.
Slice the cabbage finely. You can actually use some vegetable peelers to sort of shave it, but your peeler needs to be really sharp and quite strong.
Take the centre out of the fennel and slice it finely.
Mix all the vegetables together and sprinkle the pumpkin seeds over the top.
Vinaigrette
2 tablespoons honey
1/3 cup white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons walnut oil (you could substitute sesame oil)
¼ cup vegetable oil (I like using grapeseed oil because it really lets other flavours do their job)
Salt and pepper to taste (or for a toastier flavour, you can use tamari)
Put all the ingredients in a jar, I always have an empty Mason jar nearby for just these sorts of things, and shake until it looks like it is well blended.
Pour the vinaigrette over the slaw and toss just before serving.
And the verdict?
'This isn't very white at all Mommy.'