Swede or rutabaga is the same thing. My one grandpa called them swede, my other grandpa called them baggers, my grandma called them turnips when she set them on the table. So I tend to use all the names.
The Rutabaga is the big turnip which is orange/yellow inside. (Usually they are waxed for storage but not always. The wax is just to keep them from drying out.)
We called them swedes when I was a kid. I suppose because the Swedes were the first to grow them, or maybe because they came here from there was why they were called swedes.
When they were first grown they were for cattle feed. I can remember a hand cranked machine for shredding them on my grandfather's farm. They had to be roughly shredded so the cows could chow down on them. I don't know anybody who grows them for feed any more and the turnip shredder was never used in my memory.

Swedes are very common in the grocery stores here.
The smaller ones with white flesh which are intended for fancy table use do not have not nearly as much flavor and I never bother with them.

I usually just boil them and mash them with salt, pepper and butter.
My cousins like to mix them with mash potatoes. I know a lot of people who slice them into sticks and serve them raw like carrot sticks.

I didn't want to go far off thread.
There are a lot of other vegetables that seem under priced, beets are another example along with cabbage.
One reason is that most people are not sure how to use them or consider them poverty foods and only for poor people. Another reason is that they are not instant foods. Beets take a long cooking time.
A third reason is that a lot of them are not in single serving sizes. One Rutabaga is the vegetable serving for a medium sized family. It is the same with something like a Hubbard squash or a head of cabbage.

One other thing you can save on is making your own pickles and preserves. Sauerkraut is a natural, so are pickled beets, or kimchee. These are so natural that you don't even need to be a foody to do it, and fermented (natural) pickles are delicious.
If you go to the farmers you can buy carrots, cabbages, beets and potatoes by the bushel so cheap it would make your head spin.

You can figure that every level of distribution between you and the grower doubles the price, so 4 levels of distributors means 16 times the price.
This is why food co-ops make so much sense. A co-op might be able to cut out 3 or even 4 layers of distributors. You might have to deal with a bit of bulk and might need to volunteer to do a bit of repackaging, but if you can deal with it the savings are very worth while.
Even if you are just setting up a co-op with a few neighbors the ability to buy wholesale makes it worth the aggravations.
Fortunately most cities already have co-ops set up and looking for members.
I seem to be a bit of a fan for co-ops.

Walk into just about any grocery store and you can get the big four: Rolled oats, Chinese noodles, rice, and peanut butter.

A standard cardboard cylinder of rolled oats has thirty half-cup servings. Get the 'Old Fashion' style instead of the 'Quick'. They are larger and have more oat flavor and don't dissolve like the quick style into goo. Actual cooking time is roughly the same. Served alone, as abase or added to soups or sauces adds bulk, fiber and nutrition to the diet at minimal cost.

Chinese, Ramen, noodles go for about a quarter a pop when you buy then six at a time. Ask the store manager for a better price on a case. Eat them alone or slice and dice whatever you have into them.

A twenty-five pound sack of brown rice will keep you going for a long time. Good nutrition and versatile. Cooked rice can be refried or added to other dishes.

Peanut butter is a bargain. Find the #10 cans at bulk prices and it is really cheap per serving.

Any or all of these can be bases to which you add other ingredients. Wild onions, dandelion, mushrooms, etcetera can be added to make a meal. Fish and small game, or seasonal vegetables and fruits grown in your area, available on sale or at farmer's markets are bargains.

Canned salmon, tuna and sardines are quite cheap for protein. Most canned meats don't have actual expiration dates. They loose some flavor over time but unless the can is damaged or bulging it good. Seeing as that they can be stored for a long time without refrigeration when you see canned meat on sale stock up. Six and ten packs of salmon or tuna often go on sale for low prices.

Look up restaurant supply houses and bulk suppliers. Be polite and explain what is going on. I have found I can get very attractive deals on stuff not usually sold retail just by being nice. If they sell something you want only in huge quantities try to get people together to go in on a large purchases. Shortening was sold in fifty pound buckets. Dividing it five ways we all got a good supply at about half the retail price.

Get your spices at the restaurant supply house. Spices make wild game and canned food that has lost flavor more palatable and generally perks up meals. Buy the large containers and save. It helps to have smaller containers you can fill so you keep the balance vacuum sealed so it stays fresh longer.

Down here, you can't really find good deals on anything from a super market. Just won't happen. To give you an idea, milk by the gallon is about 6 bucks KYD ($7.31 usd or $8.86 CAD) - and thats not bad for here.

Now, thats here in Cayman where prices are inflated without any thought to why other then the owner of a market wants to buy a new 155' yacht, so need to up the prices.

What I found is that import companies that supply to restaurants and the like (exist everywhere), offer excellent deals and even items called 'restaurants packs'. Especially down here, you can get meat 'restaurant packs' where all items are individually frozen and all the perfect size (i.e. twenty 12 ounce NY strips). You can even get combo versions of them (steaks, chicken, etc). They have all sorts of these packs and probably will include what you want and call it a pack if your a good customer!

We know a guy that works at one of these supply companies and he gives us a typical restaurant discount (15% off the complete order) on top of the big discount compared to the super market.

" As God is my witness, I'll never go hungry gain" and as Scarlett raised her fist intermission came and people walked out for more popcorn and junior mints.

Timing?

Food is manipulated as much, if not more than tobacco. When 'famine food' becomes popular some director of marketting will mount a irish cooking campaigne and increase prices 20%.

Buy your turnip seeds now, before they get relabeled as Luxembourg potatos and show up on cooking shows.

I like the local food-buying co-ops. Let me find a link

Our local co-op is relatively new and they are trying to build up a client base, but I find them just a tad too vegan-politico in their marketing approach to suit my taste. I guess they are based a tad too close to Boulder.

But Ben, you only have to get them to try a monkey meat tamale once and then they are hooked.
Seriously though, the politics can come in second to the economics. Even if all your local co-op is ready to deal with is produce and grain you can use the savings there to balance some of the meat costs from other places.
You also have the option of exerting a gentle influence in them, as they attempt to indoctrinate you into their world view.
If they are trying to build clients it might be a good time to sway them towards organic free range meats.

It might also be a good place to get the contacts to start a beef ring where you and some friends can buy a beef and have it slaughtered for you.
Even though one of you alone could never deal with a whole beef at one time, several families together would have no trouble at all.
Before refrigeration was common beef rings were common in the west. They were usually set up by people who were raising beef and each one contributed an animal in turn.
They usually killed once a week and everybody got their share every week.
With modern refrigeration and market beef this could still be done today. A meat co-op could be set up to buy wholesale carcasses and just have a once a week cut and wrap session.
It might be easier to just buy the primal cuts too. That is how most of your grocery stores buy almost all their meats now instead of dealing with cutting in their own store.

A few years back I picked up a dehydrator for about 50 bucks and started dehydrating the apples growing on the trees on my land. Within a week I had more dammed dried apple chips than I knew what to do with so I ended up trading them with friends for stuff they had extra. I use it now for jerky as well as for making soup base, drying stuff like green onions and strawberries etc. I am in the process of experimenting with dehydrating whole meals to see how that works.

If times are tough, then a dehydrator is one heck of a way to start putting away meals for a rainy day. It a good way to use fruit and veg in bulk before it can spoil as well.

Around here they mostly do the expensive cuts of meat, eg pork chops. A Morrisons opened near me recently and they do some cheaper cuts, eg pork shank, which I've come to really like.

Buying in bulk definitely helped us with our food bill. We have a vacuum food saver, so it is easy to repackage and store.