When vegetables become an adventure

Dec 13, 2011

Walking through a field lined with row upon row of different vegetables — many ready for the picking — can be an exercise in abundance. When you're faced with the prospects of a huge, just-picked Japanese cabbage or spicy green lo bok pulled fresh from the ground, suddenly vegetables might seem like less of a chore and more of an adventure.

Hands holding differently shaped eggplants.
Japanese, Chinese and Filipino eggplant varieties, from front to back.
I had a chance recently to visit Tchieng Farms with Richard Molinar and Michael Yang, both of UC Cooperative Extension Fresno County and the Small Farm Program. This pair has been part of the Great Veggie Adventure over the last several months along with the rest of the Small Farm Program team.

We were visiting the farm to share some new "veggie adventures" that went beyond the four colorful vegetables highlighted in this project (to refresh your memory, the Great Veggie Adventure highlighted Romanesco, rainbow carrots, party cauliflower and watermelon radishes).

Close up on a fuzzy-skinned squash with vine in background.
Moqua, one of the vegetables at Tchieng Farms, is sometimes called hairy melon or fuzzy gourd, and can be eaten in ways similar to zucchini.
And what an adventure we had!

Molinar and Yang showed me many vegetables I had never tried, including moqua, sinqua, long beans, lo bok, opo and winter melon.

"One of the exciting things about this job is you always learn something new," Molinar said. "Our specialty is with the Asian vegetables, with Michael's expertise in that area. Asians have vegetables that are unique to their culture, that they prefer — just like Punjabis have vegetables unique to their culture, and Hispanics have vegetables common to them."

Bittermelon on the vine. I tried bittermelon for the first time at a Hmong conference earlier this year: http://ucanr.org/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=5387
Bittermelon on the vine. I tried bittermelon for the first time at a Hmong conference earlier this year.
Since Tchieng Farms sells at farmers markets, they maintain a wide variety of vegetables throughout the year, planting different vegetable varieties every few weeks. On the day we visited, there were perhaps 40 to 60 vegetable varieties in the field.

We walked between the trellised crops and up and down the plant rows, while Yang and Molinar picked samples and talked about how to eat these new-to-me vegetables.

Yang pointed out that sometimes Asian vegetables include familiar varieties that are grown and eaten in less familiar ways. For example, many Hmong and Chinese farmers grow sugar snap pea plants for the tender shoots, tendrils and leaves instead of the pea pod.

Make sure to watch our short video from that day:

Still curious?


By Brenda Dawson
Author - Communications Coordinator