Jicama for fiber!

I have been searching for fiber lately. Soluble fiber turns out to be one of your best friends in this life. It absorbs cholesterol. Eat enough soluble fiber, and your cholesterol levels will (probably) make your doctor happy. Insoluble fiber, on the other hand, is what makes good food good to eat--because you can subtract the insoluble fiber content from the carbohydrate content and get a guilt-free number.

You could, of course, get your fiber in a pill or a drink, but where's the fun in that? Better to find it in food, I say.

So I'm looking for fiber and what did I find? Jicama!

A cup of this Mexican root veggie has 6 grams of fiber out of 11 grams of carbs overall. It's not exactly a free food, but one cup of jicama can go a long way--which makes it the next best thing to a free food. (The fiber appears to be about evenly balanced between soluble and insoluble.)

Finding recipes for jicama is easier said than done, however. Most of what I've run across involves eating it raw, using it in a salad, or using it as a substitute for water chestnuts.

• Slice, julienne, or coarsely dice the jicama; douse it with lime juice; sprinkle salt and powdered cayenne over it; eat. Great snack. (Easy on the cayenne until you know how much you can handle.)
  
• Finely dice or julienne the jicama and put it in whatever salad floats your boat. The jicama will pick up flavors from the surrounding foods and add crunch to the salad.
• Slice, julienne, or finely dice the jicama and toss it in your stir-fried veggies. It absorbs surrounding flavors and crunches just like water chestnuts.

I'm not doing so well with finding recipes for jicama as a cooked vegetable or side dish. Maybe it is not used that way in traditional Mexican cooking or in its new international role (jjicama is apparently quite popular in Australia!). It looks like some kitchen experimentation is called for if I want to see what else jicama can do besides crunch. Not that crunchy is a bad thing. It's just that I wonder what will happen when I boil jicama . . . or roast it . . . or toss it in the crock pot.

In the meantime, I now buy jicama every time I buy fresh veggies. At Mama's home, my first errand is going to the grocery store for fresh vegetables--and jicama. Now my cousin and her running buddy are hooked on jicama. Maybe enough people will start buying it that the price will come down from its current 89 - 99 cents per pound; maybe enough people will start demanding it that more stores will sell it.