NIPS

I love fall.  I love everything about fall.  I love the cool crisp air.  I love the sound of the dry leaves beneath my feet.  I love the apple orchard trips filled with apples, pumpkin donuts, and cider.  I love carving my Halloween pumpkin.  I love watching horror movies.  I have a list of movies I try to watch every October.  I love the food.  The squashes, the apples, the pears, and the pumpkins.  Pumpkin muffins, pumpkin pancakes, pumpkin pie, pumpkin donuts, I even developed my own pumpkin meatloaf recipe with a pumpkin gravy.  And with me being in charge of the kitchen these days, I’ve never been so excited for a magazine to arrive at my house.  I was greatly anticipating the arrival of my Cooking Light magazine.  The October issue.

Aya loves to cook, so my mom got Aya a subscription to the Cooking Light magazine for Christmas.  I’m not a magazine person.  I usually just look at the pictures or read the captions.  But since I’ve been at home cooking now, 99 percent of what I make comes from this magazine or website.  It’s mine now.  Yes, I get excited over a cooking magazine.  A magazine about LIGHT cooking.  Deal with it.  It has great, tasty, easy, fast, and healthy recipes.  The nutrition of my family is now in my hands and I don’t take my responsibility LIGHTly.

The October issue arrived and I immediately started tagging recipes and planning my meals for the whole month.  My first fall meal I was planning was prosciutto sandwich with pear and blue cheese, a mixed green salad with apples, walnuts, and goat cheese, and apple parsnip soup.  I’ve never had parsnips, or even seen them, but this sounded good, and the picture looked great, too.  I was so excited to kick off fall with this intro fall meal.  I even went to the farm market to buy all my produce. 

Cooking day arrived.  This shouldn’t be a big deal.  The only item that would really take any time is the soup.  But Ellie didn’t nap well.  She was extremely needy and whiney all day long.  I tried peeling the apples when she was asleep, but her nap didn’t last long.  Time was passing and my progress was slow.  I finally got to peel the parsnips.  They smell harsh and pinchy.  These are supposed to be paired with apples!?  I began to question what I purchased.  Do you know how many vegetables end in “nips?”  Two!  There are parsnips and turnips.  Both I have never eaten or seen before.  So I decided to Google them both and sure enough, I bought the wrong one.  I bought turnips!  What do I do now!?  I already have half the soup made!  I’ve never had turnips, and as of right now, I HATE them.  Seriously, whoever named these vegetables really dropped the ball.  They don’t even look like they are both from the “nip” family.  Turnips are purple round balls, and parsnips look like white carrots.  Since parsnips look closer to carrots, I propose they change the name to parrots... No?

So Ellie and I take an emergency field trip to Meijers to buy turnips.  Wait, I mean parsnips.  I did it again!  The whole time on my way to Meijers I kept chanting in my head, parsnips, parsnips, parsnips.  I get to Mejiers and ask, can you tell me where the turnips, I mean parsnips are?

Finally, we get home with my PARSNIPS, and even with a needy baby I somehow manage to make the rest of the meal… and on time.  It was a big hit and Aya loved it.  But now I have no idea what to do with all these leftover parsnips.  I mean turnips.