From my garden

Here is my next adventure in living off the land and my first attempt at homemade horseradish. The fumes are pretty potent. It's a good idea to even cut up and grind the root on a back porch is you have one. My kitchen smells like cocktail sauce gone crazy. 
My pictures loaded in reverse order, but here is the cleaned root ready for the food processor.
Here is the freshly plucked root. I always wonder, "who was the first to decide something that looks like this could be edible?" Not being the survivor type myself, the leaves look like the most edible part of the plant to me. Don't be fooled! At first I was told the leaves were poisonous, but I've found some sites that have talked about using them.
They are just the tip of the iceberg. The real bounty is deep underneath. My favorite site that yielded the most information was horseradish.org. The secret agent cartoon root is funny too. The key to the heat of the mix was when the root was harvested and the wait time between grinding and adding the vinegar. 

The very smell of my homemade horseradish makes me think of my Grandpa Zachar. He was 100% Chech and he loved all things hot. He had a jar out on the dining table for every holiday and it was the only good reason to be seated at the kids table. Being the oldest grandchild meant I was stuck with a bunch of young kids. (holidays.) I could not understand how he could slather that strong stuff on his meat.

Now that I'm older with more refined taste buds (seriously) I see the sense of adding horseradish to a roast beef sub piled high on a crusty sub bun.

Thanks for adding flavor to my life Grandpa.