Kohlrabi Chicken

My biggest Kohlrabi split in half. I don't know how or why - too much water after ages of none, freeze damage, was it ready to be harvested and I left it in too long? My other question, can I still eat it? And my primary kohlrabi question, how do you eat this crazy thing anyways?

Most gardening books include a brief blurb admonishing the neophyte gardener to plant only vegetables that they want to eat, which is good advice. Which I ignored. The seeds were on sale at the dollar store (1 cent a packet!), the picture on the packet was stunning, I had read local garden guides recommending Kohlrabi for our area and I figured that I was more likely to figure out how to eat it than any of the sort I saw as I glanced around the dollar store. Despite my obvious advantages - ability to read, Internet access, a full set of teeth to eat with - I have done no better, perhaps worse, than my bargain shopping brethren.

I, like most 30 something bourgeoisie American snots, abhor bargain shopping establishments. I hate wal-mart, loath costco and stay out dollar stores. Well, sometimes I go in dollar stores. OK, with some regularity. I have one addiction which draw me back, travel coffee mugs. I don't collect travel mugs, I just love to lose them. I've left travel mugs in all the best places. My wife has grown tired of me buying nice travel mugs and them treating like disposable paper cups. While on that subject, I think the new line of re-usable coffee mugs that look like disposable paper cups are stupid. Really people, you want your cup to look like you could throw it away? I don't get it. So I sneak into dollar stores and buy cheap mugs and hope my wife is not paying any attention, assuming I keep them in my possession long enough to get home and into the line-up. The real pain is that nothing at the dollar store is a dollar. The cups are like 3.99 or so. Still cheap.

I learned of dollar stores as seed depots from a client. This client is dear to me due to her having played a reasonable size role in the great chicken drive of 2009. While out at her farm, doing what I do (mysterious, isn't it?) I noticed her sizable collection of animals that are not big. She doesn't have one of every species in that rather broad category, but she does have these - chickens, ducks, geese (pronounced thusly - ba-stards) rabbits, small dogs, children, cats and guinea pigs. All pretty much running loose together. Since chickens, along with bees, are on my list of animals that fly that would make my garden nicer, I began asking her all about her flock. She has about 15 hens - 3 Rhode Island reds, 9 mixed breeds, 1 with a crazy fluffy head and fluffy feet and one chicken that once rode to Fredricksburg, Texas in the undercarriage of her minivan. The story, as she told it, is a bit choppy owing to it's telling being interrupted by her goose (ba-stard) trying to peck my testicles off.

One day she parked her van down by the chickens et. al. and left it for the night. The next morning she loaded up the kids and drove roughly 50 miles to visit a friend. While exchanging greetings in her friend's drive a rather bedraggled, and apparently hot to the touch, chicken stumbled out from under the front tire. After three irregular circles, the little gal found a spot of grass and stuck her head back under her wing where all agreed it had likely been for the last hour. After a night's recovery in the friends bathroom, she road home in a normal, civilized chicken manner - between two kids in the backseat of a minivan. Apparently it was some time before she layed any eggs again. What a chicken adventure! Think of the tale she had to share. I'm sure the bunny's bought in immediately. the other chickens stuck their heads under thier wings for the duration of the telling, the guinea pigs stared on in awe and the geese (ba-stards) tried to peck her famous legs off.

I digress. Again. So chicken lady told me to hit the dollar store for a seed sale. 90% off the one dollar seed packets (Ok so the seed packets really are a dollar still). I strolled in, picked out a coffee mug and proceeded to fill a plastic bag with 40 some odd packages of seed. Including some plants I didn't know much about, like kohlrabi. Very greedy acting, I was. I was prepared to shell out the whopping 4 dollars that these packets were going to set me back, but the clerk rung them up as 1 cent a piece. I earnestly tried to correct him (really, I did!), but he had that dollar store kind of look in his eyes and I could tell he didn't care. So I bought my Kohlrabi and 43 other packets of seeds for less than 50 cents. But now what to do with them, I don't know. I get that dollar store look a bit myself when I think about it.