A fun way to eat your vegetables is to use them to scoop or wrap a delicious filling or dip. The kids who come to the farm delight in vegetables they can get their hands around. It is like magic when you grow a vegetable that serves as a spoon and can be eaten right along with the rice it is scooping! I will share a few of my favorite spring vegetables that make great wraps, spoons, and scoops. Members of the CSA at my farm have been enjoying the first few weeks of harvests in May and June, and these vegetable crops are some of the highlights.
Lettuce Cabbage
Fun Jen Napa Cabbage is a cabbage variety with mild delicate leaves like lettuce and white crunchy stems like celery. We call it lettuce cabbage at our farm. Chop it up and you have a complete salad. With its big wide leaves, it also makes an excellent lettuce wrap. Saucy chicken cooked in the crock pot makes a delicious filling. Or anything spicy and ricey.
Bok Choy
Bok Choy is similar, with its celery-like spoon at the bottom and green leafy vegetable top. We use bok Choy as edible spoons. My kids prefer their vegetables raw and crunchy. They use edible spoons to scoop up anything saucy, spicy, and ricey. Bok Choy spoons also scoop up hummus or ranch dressing. Anything you want to scoop can be scooped with a Bok Choy spoon.
Salad Turnips
Hakurai turnips are not your ordinary turnips. They are delicious, crisp, white turnips that are delicious raw. Peel and slice them and use as scoops for dips, or toss chopped pieces into salad.
Whether you are looking for a fun vegetable to grow in your garden or buying some seasonal produce at the local farmer’s market, try these varieties of edible spoons and healthy wraps.
written by Ilene White Freedman for Mother Earth News 6/7/2017