Jun 10th, 2014

Author: donich_admin

Turnip for the books

When I was a child, my Grandfather (we called him ‘Pop’ because he hated the name ‘Granddad’) had an allotment style garden on their house in Dumbarton. I remember he grew two things I particularly liked – one of them was peapods (well obviously), and the other one was ‘snowball’ turnips.

To my recollection, neither of these ever made it as far as being cooked. The peapods never made it out of the garden at all, and the turnips got there only to be peeled with a knife and then eaten like an apple. They were so tender and good 🙂

My Gran and Pop are long since passed away and buried just down the road from here in Cardross, but today I had some of my own peapods and a snowball turnip out of the garden and they tasted just as good as they did forty years ago. I got to thinking about how strange it is that the world has changed out of all reckoning since then, and yet in other ways is just the same.