For the past five or so years, I’ve signed up for a CSA Subscription with a local farm. This means that for 20ish weeks every spring and summer, I get to enjoy bags full of fresh, locally-grown produce. It’s made me a bit of a root veggie connoisseur, chowing down on all the turnips, jicama, carrots, radishes, and beets that I see week-after-week.

All of that is just to say that when I opened my P.O. Box and saw “Root Cause” — a zine all about cooking those underground eats — I was delighted! The zine aims to champion “beets, turnips, rutabagas, and other unfairly maligned vegetables” and offers straight-forward, easy-to-follow recipes for cooking ’em up, accompanied by simple, bright illustrations. Here beets find their way into hummus, carrots into muffins, and parsnips become fries. While I haven’t had a chance to try any of the recipes yet, I’m so excited to put them to work on my CSA haul this spring, injecting some much needed creativity into my typically roasted roster of roots.

Last week at Zine Club, I shared “Root Cause” with the group as part of our show-n-tell. While the recipe for celery root soup made the zine fit the evening’s theme (soup zines), it was the roasted radish recipe that got our group excited, and at least a few zinester’s walked away from the meeting wanting to try out the recipe for themselves.

“Root Cause” is part of Andy Boynton’s Reciwee Zine Series which focuses on “hyper-short recipes and cheap, locally sourced ingredients”. The series aims to be accessible and curiosity-arousing, inspiring folks to branch out and try new ingredients, reclaiming their “independence from the Nestles and General Mills of the world.” It’s a rad mission, and I’m glad that “Root Cause” will find its place among the cookzines I turn to when I want to turn my bags of CSA veggies into a hearty meal.