Around here it is “quick-eat-all-the-stored-vegetables-before-they-get-punky” season. That includes squashes, pumpkins, carrots, rutabagas and beets. The potatoes I don’t worry about too much, except to rub off the sprouts when they appear like magic, even though I keep the vegetables in the dark and cold. But we have to eat squashes and get serious about the other stored roots. It is only a month and a half or so to fresh stuff, starting with asparagus and pretty soon after that, greens!

Plus I really needed a break from all those Whoopie Pies you sent me recipes for.

The carrots and rutabagas did awfully well this winter. The last dozen or so carrots had only a tiny fluff of chartreuse colored leaves and a few hairy white roots, easily scrubbed away, and the rutabagas showed a few sprouts around the top. I wanted to cook up something with them that would be a little different.

We eat both carrots and rutabagas raw, grated into salads and cole slaw. And of course, you need them both in a good old New England boiled dinner. I love rutabagas and potatoes boiled and mashed together and I roast them in the oven with potatoes and onion or garlic.

I got to thinking about Harvard beets, and thought, well, why not make a sweet and sour sauce for carrots and rutabagas like I do for the beets? All three vegetables are a little on the sweet side, all are roots. It ought to work. And by golly, it did.

I tried this out on a couple of neighbors, our friend Keith, the artist, who is painting a house up the road, and Dudley, who was baching it last week. Those guys together with Jamie got a load of vegetables, mitigated by a pork chop or two, because I cooked up a buttercup squash, mashed with a little brown sugar and butter to go with the experimental carrots and rutabagas. Then they had pie for dessert, so they had nothing to complain about.

They liked the carrots and rutabagas. Jamie thought that it would be even better with a touch of ginger or even a bit of pineapple. I concur, and add them below as options for you to try. For example, if you have used some pineapple in another recipe, you could use the juice in the place of the water in the recipe. I used the cooking water from the vegetables.

This is really pretty, too, because the carrots are all bright orange, and the rutabagas turn a lovely buttery yellow. The sauce is clear and makes the vegetables glisten. Lovely, lovely.

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Sweet and Sour Carrots and Rutabagas

Serves 4 or so.

4 medium carrots, peeled and cut into bite-sized pieces

Half a medium rutabaga, peeled and cut into bite-sized pieces

1/2 cup sugar

1 1/2 teaspoon cornstarch

1/4 cup cider vinegar

1/4 cup water (vegetable cooking water or pineapple juice)

A few chunks of pineapple (optional)

1/2 teaspoon of ginger or to taste (optional)

Cook the vegetables until they are tender. Drain and set aside. Mix the sugar and cornstarch together in the pan, and whisk in the vinegar and water, and cook until the sauce bubbles and is translucent. Return the vegetables to the pan, and warm through. Add the pineapple if you wish and stir in the ginger.