Horseradish

"The radish is worth its weight in lead,
the beet its weight in silver,
the horseradish its weight in gold."

Years ago http://riverrim.blogspot.com/ gave me some horseradish roots. I built a raised bed and filled it with a sandy soil and plopped them in. Whenever I harvest the roots I take the tops and replant them. Yesterday morning , seeing as we had a couple of mornings below freezing I decided it was time to do the horseradish. So at 25 degrees we went and stuck our hands in wet sand and pulled and pulled and pulled to get this....










Not much you may say but enough for us. So after washing, peeling and chopping into pieces we needed a box of these....










We put it in the food processor and ground it up then added a little salt, sugar and vinegar. We ended up with 5 pints of fresh horseradish. That last one was full but we took a 1/4 pint jar and put some in for a friend.











You can find lots of useless horseradish facts at... http://www.horseradish.org/homepage.html

The first time we made our own horseradish my uncle said he would be the taste tester. He said he loved horseradish. We gave him 1/2 a teaspoon to try and his whole bald head broke out in a sweat so we knew we did good!

Another time my oldest son had a cold and he hates to take medicine. He just kept sniffing and sniffing, which drives me nuts, and complaining he couldn't breath. I told him I had something for him and I gave him a teaspoon of horseradish. He had said "what's that gonna do" but then he took it and said in dripping sarcasm "wow mom that really worked" and went to his room. A short time later he came out and could breath just fine and admitted that maybe I did know something. (When your teenager tells you that you might know something you NEVER forget that moment) Now when ever he gets a cold that is what he uses to make him breath!

So after our hard work we rewarded ourselves with a ham dinner with potatoes, squash and yes we used some horseradish because Cyndy said it was really good on ham, and it was!