Hon Tsai Tai, Sunchokes and Veggie Storage Tips

Okay, so my Chinese friend was interested in helping me a little more with my hon tsai tai. He suggested another way to prepare it using bacon. His advice was to chop bacon into small pieces and cook bacon with a little bit of stir fry oil. Then, remove the bacon, and cook chopped hon tsai tai in the remaining oil. Add back the bacon and mix it all up, and voila! One more way to serve this beautiful veggie! He said in China they have a kind of smoked meat that we don't have here, and that bacon is probably our closest equivalent.

I tried his advice, along with some Sunchoke and Potato American Fries. I could kinda feel my arteries clogging as I ate all that bacon (maybe I'd use less next time?), but it was pretty good for a once-in-a-while kinda meal. I should also say that I did add a handful of spinach and some of my leftover green garlic puree to the stir fry too.

A coupla tips for the sunchokes - boil a few along with some potatoes ahead of time, then keep 'em in the fridge. It seems you can add sunchokes almost anywhere you'd use a potato. I've been adding a bit of my chopped pre-cooked sunchokes and potatoes to some eggs in the morning for breakfast. Yum! Another great use for sunchokes is this A-M-A-Z-I-N-G sunchoke dip. It's something akin to hummus and you can use up the whole batch of sunchokes in one batch if you want. I made mine without the chiles since I wanted it to be friendly for my four-year-old.

And lastly, one thing this city girl struggles with when I get a new box of veggies is how to best store 'em. Occasionally our Harmony Valley Farm newsletter will have some advice such as 'wrap in a damp paper towel and store in the crisper'...but not always. So imagine my delight when I stumbled upon a site with great info on how to store nearly any veggie. And of course I'm gonna share it with you! Enjoy!

Vegetable Storage Guidelines (courtesy of Angelic Organics)