Sunday 30 November 2008

Belated Beets, etc.

Just like with the cabbage earlier in the year, I had been neglecting the red and golden beets in my crisper. The beets were from our last CSA pick up day, which was many weeks ago now. Only two were past saving - the rest were still very firm, and a couple had a few green leaves growing out of them even.

I don't have a lot of experience cooking beets, but I do recall really liking the taste of beets in Harvard sauce, like my mom used to serve when I was small. So I decided to try and make them. I must say, they turned out deliciously! The red and golden beets are a nice contrast to each other, and the sauce was sweetly tart, just the way I like it. Mmmmm.... I had my fill of beets today, and I still have six more servings ready to pop in the deep freeze for future enjoyment.

Three of the smallest beets that had new leaves growing I decided to plant in some moist sandy dirt. I figured if some beet greens were growing out of them just sitting there in the fridge, maybe some really nice beet greens would emerge if I actually helped them along a bit. I have no idea if it will work, but I thought it was worth a try. I doubt I will get enough beet greens for me to eat, but our guinea pigs will love the fresh treat in the depths of winter.

I was glad that my beets were relativley successful, because my cinnamon buns were not. I had tried out a new dough recipe from the latest edition of Mother Earth magazine. The dough was supposed to be as good for sweet dough recipes as it was for regular bread. And it probably is, as long as you don't keep the dough until it gets to its more sourdough stage, a week later. The buns look nice, and they are edible, but a sourdough cinnamon bun is not really the flavor I was after. Oh well - bake and learn!

We got a couple other things done this weekend as well, namely having the chimney cleaned (after several failed attempts to do it ourselves - but now we know how!), and putting up two wooden shelving units in the basement so my food storage efforts will be a bit more organized (pictures to follow). So, it was a nice practical weekend, which felt good after an otherwise surreal kind of week.

Wishing everyone peace and contentment in these strange days :)

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'll have to try the beet recipe. I've been trying to figure out what to do with all the beats I soaked for the wine I made.

Theresa said...

The beets turned out very well indeed! And it wasn't even that difficult to do. The most time consuming part was peeling the boiled beets and chopping them up. I'm sure your pre-wine beets would be fine, especially with the harvard sauce on them.

Kale for Sale said...

Here's more beet inspiration. I had a roasted beet sandwich yesterday (my first). Roasted and balsamic vinegar marinated beets, chevre, horseradish and watercress on a sweet batard baguette. It was ridiculously good and I can't wait to have another.

Theresa said...

Kale, that sounds mouthwatering. What sort of flavor does chevre cheese have? I haven't had that before - is it mild? This sounds like a delicious combination of flavors - thanks for the suggestion!

Anonymous said...

This post popped into my head when I was at the grocery store today and I came home with a bag each of red and golden beets. I can't wait to try out that recipe. Thanks for the inspiration!

Anonymous said...

Oh, and a question: you mentioned you were going to freeze the leftovers. Are they mixed in with the sauce already? I would guess that you freeze the cooked beets and just make the sauce after thawing...is that right?

Oh and one more: would the recipe work for roasted beets or should you boil them instead? Thanks!!

Theresa said...

Hi RA :) I froze the beets and the sauce together, and they turned out just fine. I would think that roasted beets would also work out very well - you would just have no beet water to use in the sauce, so you'd have to use all orange juice instead.