Fennel. Meh.

Last week, for the first time in over a year, I ordered a Bountiful Basket. I've been in a dinner-cooking rut (read: I don't want to do it. Ever. Takeout is way easier.) and thought maybe a random assortment of produce would inspire me to get back in the kitchen.

I expected strawberries and blueberries. I was not, however, expecting to see two of these bad boys:

Mostly because, as far as I can recall, I've never seen anything like them in my life.

I can't decide if it looks more like Veggie Cthulu...

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...or a Veggie Ood:

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Amiright?

Either way, I'm in.

I overheard someone at the basket pickup site talking about fennel, and since I recognized everything else in there, I assumed that's what this was. Some quick googling after I got home confirmed my assumption.

But what the Stamos do you do with fennel?

Again with the googling...and I found a few recipes that looked promising. On Monday night I took inspiration from this and this and threw together this:

It's a pizza (duh) with homemade crust (I actually used this naan recipe for my dough), homemade sauce (we also got tomatoes in our basket and I've got basil growing in my kitchen window), sausage (from the store because I am not nearly hardcore enough to make my own sausage), and caramelized onions and fennel. I felt so very domestic, even if I did forget to pre-bake the crust which meant the middle ended up kind of soggy.

It was...underwhelming. The pizza itself was good, and I think we'll make it again. Next time I'll do it without the fennel, though, since I didn't feel like it added anything special. Still, I tried something I'd never eaten before, which is one of the items on my list, so at least there's that.

Since we got two of them, I'm trying this recipe tomorrow. I don't have high expectations but I'm trying to keep an open mind.

Have you ever had fennel? How did you eat it? And what did you think?