When I asked my mom what vegetable she was making with her mashed potatoes and beef roast for the family Sunday dinner, I was surprised when she answered me with "your dad's fresh carrots from the garden."

After all, over the weekend it was below-zero, and it's not often you can talk about enjoying "fresh vegetables" from a garden when the calendar shows it's near the end of a snowy and cold January.

It just goes to show that sometimes even I forget how many advantages there are as a result of a big garden, especially when it comes to available ingredients throughout the year.

On Christmas Eve, for example, I was still picking parsley from the garden and fresh sage (though it was nestled under the snow), with the parsley used for homemade clam chowder to have before midnight Mass and the sage seasoning our roast turkey and stuffing for the next day's Christmas dinner.

I also had fresh chives from near the fence to use in a soft cheese ball recipe.

But a month later, in the dead of winter, there's something comforting about knowing that carrots, along with onions and leeks that I saved from my own garden, are still being enjoyed from what was planted last April and May.

My Dad and Auntie Lottie still remind me how Grandma and Grandpa Potempa used the underground root cellar at our farm to store Grandma's canning, including pears, beans, tomatoes, jam and sauerkraut, and also bushels of winter apples, black walnuts, pears, carrots, potatoes, onions, dried herbs and even heads of cabbage, to use to feed a big Catholic Polish family of nine children all winter.

Today, my dad still keeps apples (if there's a bounty in the fall), walnuts, carrots, onions and potatoes for Mom to use during the winter.

And leaving the dirt on all the root vegetables helps with preservation.

Today's easy apple cake recipe, given to me by Karen Kallok of Griffith, is a great example of something baked that uses ingredients on hand during the cold and gray months, like leftover walnuts from holiday baking and those few apples starting to shrivel.

Your fired-up oven, and the cake that will come out once the door is opened, will help warm up hearts and homes.

Simple Kitchen Apple Cake

3 eggs

1-3/4 cup sugar

1 cup cooking oil

2 cups sifted flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 dash salt

5 apples, peeled and diced

1 cup chopped walnuts

* Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

* Grease and flour a 9-by-13-inch baking pan. Set aside.

* Blend eggs, sugar and oil together in a mixing bowl.

* Sift together flour, cinnamon, 1 teaspoon of baking soda and salt, and stir into egg mixture.

* Fold in apples and nuts.

* Pour batter into prepared pan and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour or until it tests done.

Makes 16 slices.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer. He can be reached at ppotempa@nwitimes.com or 219.852.4327.