Grandma’s Kohlrabi-Carrot-Vegetables with Plant-Based Meatballs and Potatoes

Today I'm taking you back to my grandma's garden. I also spent most of my childhood in this garden - morning to night. So, of course, we also ate there. Cooked on the two small portable hotplates in the gazebo and, above all, things we had previously harvested from various beds. For me, this meal triggers a real flashback, and I can see myself sitting on the garden bench under the large parasol, hearing a lawnmower in the distance, smelling the fresh air and waiting for the ice cream van to drive past. But let's go back to the actual recipe and the individual components.

The vegan meatballs: Supposedly, meat is often seen as the main component of a meal, but here and now, they play more of a supporting role for me. That's why I didn't make it too complicated for myself and almost gave the vegan 1:1 translation of meatballs in the bowl. In other words, instead of minced meat, I used vegan minced meat - and to make sure it's easy to shape, it's best to use „fresh“ vegan minced meat. If you can't find it or don't like it, we have another recipe for vegan meatballs made from soy granules on our blog and you can also easily make our vegan kidney bean-based meatballs in meatball form.

The potatoes: Today, I really wanted to serve good old boiled potatoes as a side dish, but if you’re really wild, you could toss them in some melted vegan butter and chopped parsley after cooking. I wanted to keep it as simple as possible, as it also gives the buttery granny vegetables something to neutralize. Instead of boiled potatoes, mashed potatoes would also go really well with this dish.

The famous grandma vegetables: I talk about my grandma and my childhood all the time, but I know that many of you have eaten exactly these kinds of vegetables, and the buttery smell alone triggers so many memories. Grandma’s must have had a good understanding and even kids who didn’t like vegetables loved these. Let’s not kid ourselves: The butter is the „secret ingredient“, and that’s why there’s plenty of it in my recipe.

However, the base in the pot is kohlrabi, carrot and onion. I would have loved to use turnips, but unfortunately, I couldn't find them anywhere. But if you see them, go for it - they're basically like a milder version of radishes or radishes. To be honest, my grandma didn't have vegan cream - it was dominated by butter. However, I like it because it makes the vegetables a little more saucy and we don't have any other sauce in the recipe.

Of course, you can also add parsley to the vegetables, and it's probably even more classic, but I was always in charge of the chives in my grandma's garden and had to make sure that the flowers were cut off. Today, I honestly don't know why exactly, but you can still eat flowering chives (even including the blossom). However, I still feel very attached to chives today, which is why they end up in my pot.

If you also have memories of „eating like grandma used to“, please tell us about them in the comments.