Day in the Life of an Idiot

 ...I totally thought this was a new vegetable. Turns out it's just a different variety of bok choy.


Image: a much WHITER, more kale like bok choy... still bok choy, though, folks.  I had no idea.

I haven't talked much about my fall CSA. First of all, I figured y'all were probably sick of me bragging about the amazing produce I was getting, and also there really hasn't been anything unusual or terribly interesting. We had a surfeit of habanero peppers, all of which I gave away to a little free pantry.  Likewise, we had too many hot Thai bird pepper, some of which I still have (though I did add one to the the Thai eggplant dish I made before and that was actually a yummy addition.) But, like, we have a bucket of them... and we just don't pepper that much.  But, otherwise it's been butternut squash and green beans and the sorts of things you'd expect in a fall share.

Then came this today. They listed it as pok choi, but that was just a fooly, because pok choi is just British for bok choy. They are the same vegetable. This one is just called white bok choi, and the one I see in the supermarket more regularly is the Shanghai bok choi.  I am excited to tell you that I can accidentally read the Chinese for this: 小白菜 because it's the same in Japanese Kanji: Small White Vegetable.  Ironically, in Japanese, the Kanji is different, as it the word: chingensai.

I have not attempted to taste it yet, but will report as to whether or not the white variety tastes significantly different from the Shanghai variety. I suspect it won't.  The trick will be convincing my wife that this is, indeed, the same vegetable she has grown to enjoy.