Friday, October 14, 2005

Dlog Bogging

Our local market serves a Latino clientele, along with your more "predictable" Marin shoppers. It is by no means an upscale market, but it does a darned good job in its produce department, especially given that it's located across the street from the Marin County Civic Center, home to a fantastic farmers' market twice a week.
I was totally surprised to find taro roots among the vegetables the other day, not having done my research. So I bought four of them, then Googled "taro latin," and learned that the taro root is a staple of South American and Puerto Rican diets. Apparently cultivation of taro, also known as yautia, cocoyam, dasheen or tannia (and I may be commingling varieties here ― I'm not a botanist, I just eat the stuff), is very old in the Americas, and possibly arose, maybe 10,000 years ago, in India. I read this on a site I stumbled across, Invista: "Since taro is a staple food, it is common for it to have hundreds of names. In 1999, the UN listed forty-four countries that grow taro, and the University of Hawaii listed eighty-five known cultivars."
See what you can find out? Thank goodness for the Internet. And high-speed.
And thank goodness for my digital camera, so I can show you this:
Bean Sprout looks about as perplexed as I am over what to do with a taro root (actually a corm).
What will I do with it? I do have a poi recipe. But no. I think I'll use one tonight, with some tofu and eggplant, in a little stir-fry. The other three might go nicely in a traditional Japanese meal along with some chicken... Or I could stew cubes of it in coconut milk, Thai style... Or simmer a pot of Puerto Rican root vegetable soup.. Or make fried chips. Or...

5 comments:

Farmgirl Susan said...

So what do you want for the dog already? (Looks awfully clean and fluffy. That wouldn't last a la farm. Dogs here roll in, um, well, farm stuff.)

cookiecrumb said...

Here's the thing about this dog. His hair grows. So when it gets dirty, we cut it. No bath necessary! And then it grows back.
Um, but, he'd love to roll in your -- stuff. Dogs love smelly stuff.
Uh... Isn't he going to roll in my new sheep's stuff? You know: Girl!

Farmgirl Susan said...

Hmmmm. Am rethinking dog buying offer. Sounds awfully high maintenance. Beagles always look the same year 'round. And Bear, well, he's Self Cleaning (or at least that's the b.s. I've chosen to believe). It really is amazing how he can be covered in leaves and sticks one minute, and clean and shiny the next. Self Cleaning. No other explanation. It's not as if I bathed him.

P.S. I don't know, Cookiecrumb. There's a lot of tough competition in the Name That Sheep Contest. Not that the judges didn't LOL at your entry. : )

Farmgirl Susan said...

I just noticed something. That little dog looks pink! You don't have him dyed, do you? (I know this is a real thing. I was informed firsthand by someone who once spotted a poodle leaving PetSmart grooming center: "All it's poodle parts were pink!") I guess I'd better not say "Why? Why? WHY?" in case your dog really is dyed pink.

cookiecrumb said...

FG: I am nutty, but I'm not a total nut case. Bean Sprout was sitting on a coral-colored dish towel for that picture. Reflection. (Always trying to snazz up my photos with backgrounds... but it didn't make the final cut.)
Good eye, you!