Gingered Beets

Uh-oh. Someone wants my recipe for "gingered beets". Our friend The Allison very kindly says "it remains the only enjoyable experience I've ever had with beets".

The pressure!

Trouble is, I don't keep recipes. In fact, I don't even remember making 'gingered beets'. Ginger? With beets? Sounds do-able. Usually, I read a few (dozen) variants on a theme and then use whatever is in the 'fridge to approximate a half-remembered version of something I may not have actually seen. That's what happens when you've got a backlog of greens and the root vegetables are popping out of the crisper. As Mary might say, the box is winning!

So, Allison, best I can do is tell you the recipe that I nearly always use for beets (and sometimes for turnips):

- Trim off greens and roots (you can saute the greens, just like a light kale!)
- Peel beets (apparently you can steam/roast them and the skins 'just slip right off'. I've always just peeled 'em with a peeler).
- Cut into small cubes
- Heat a small saute pan with a good amount of olive oil (you want one layer of beets)
- Toss beets around for a little sizzle
- Pour in enough water so that it reaches about half-way up the beets
- Cover and cook at medium-high heat under the water is evaporated (listen for the hiss to turn to a sizzle)
- Uncover, stir until the outside of the beets are crispy
- Season with fresh ground pepper, some good salt, and... minced fresh herbs. Whatever you've got in the garden. Or some dried herbs. Basil, maybe. Or an Italian mix.

2nd part of the quiz: "What does one serve with the beets?"

Well, personally, I think ham or pork. A nice honey ham slice and corn on the cob or maybe a pork tenderloin with a side of stuffing. But that doesn't fly at the Vegetarian Bungalow. So, how about a salad?:

Mix beets, goat cheese, baby salad greens and chopped roasted walnuts into a salad bowl just moments before serving. Drizzle with a Italian vinaigrette, serve with thick sliced, toasted and buttered, whole grain bread.

Some randomly chosen recipes:

Roasted beets
Beet and goat cheese salad
Two Small Farms recipe page for beets

But really, planning a meal is so... pre-Internets. Here's a fun thing when you've got 3 ingredients and no inspiration.

AND random searches for vegetable info gets you a quote from Tom Robbins:
"The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent, not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious."

Bonus points!

Jazz Feet!

From the deleted scenes of Slings and Arrows, Season 3: Episode 3. If you know what I'm talking about, then you know why Rebecca and I just laughed ourselves silly. The East Hastings musical is hysterical.

Seriously, start watching this show.

October Theater

Rarely does a week go by without some theater event for the Wiznals. Last month we saw 4 plays that I can think of, one of them twice.

10/6 - We saw 6 hours of theater on this Saturday. It was the Kentucky Cycle at the Willows Theatre in Concord. The work is "a series of nine one-act plays...that explores American mythology...through the intertwined histories of three fictional families struggling over a portion of land in the Cumberland plateau." It's a huge, sprawling story and a tough one. It's a multi-award wining show and I really liked seeing it. I think the writing was a little uneven in some of the one-acts, but over all, a pretty impressive effort.

10/14 and 10/21 - The triumphant launch of R's SF Shakes school tour. It's an hour long performance that goes on the road during the school year. She trims the script down and then casts and directs the group. Her cast may end up doing 300 shows between October and the end of the spring all over NoCal with some trips to SoCal. The show this year is Twelfth Night. I saw it on the 14th and loved it, so I went again with Susan and Princess Melissa.

10/20 - PYT's Nate the Great: So much fun! The play is pretty much a one man show and the 15 year old in the central role was more than up to the task. Nice job, Ryan! The Nate the Great books have been around for ages. Surprising, since neither Mom Wiz or I had even heard of them. Rebecca is going to do Reluctant Dragon for PYT in December and Peter Pan in March.


10/26 - And the gala opening of Three Tall Women, a 3 woman show about "...a universal theme: the human aging process. By depicting a woman at three different stages of her life, (playwright) Albee cleverly juxtaposes three very different experiences and perspectives." Rebecca stars a "C", the youngest tall woman. It's a challenging, emotional script with powerful performances by the 3 actresses. I think this is the kind of intimate story that the Pear does best. It's hard not to be emotionally involved with the characters in that small space.

More next month!

Two New Recipes

Inspired by the Fine Dining Club meeting we had on 11/3, I was trying new recipes. Then, mid-week, I got tagged by a friend to "send a recipe to this chain list and you'll get 36 recipes in reply". So, figured I'd kill and cook two birds with one stone: finish the tag and blog these delicious dishes:

Savory Butternut Squash Pasta Sauce
1. Trim, peel and scoop a butternut squash. (edit: cut into chunks)
2. Steam (chunks) until soft
3. Sautee 1 chopped onion in oil at med heat
4. Add garlic, sage, pepper to taste
5. Add squash and a small amount of water, cover, cook until squash is mushy
6. Blend with a little milk and enough water to reach desired consistency
7. Serve with pasta and sauteed veggies

Other versions abound.

Tofu Scramble
1. Sautee minced onion and garlic in oil
2. Break up a block of firm tofu into 8 pieces, squeeze the pieces in your hands to get more moisture out.
3. Toss the tofu and other "scrambled egg" ingredients into the pan (bell peppers, sausage, mushrooms, etc)
4. Season with tumeric and pepper (or cumin and lime juice for a Mexican style)
5. Serve with toast (or tortillas)

Other versions

Please use less plastic

I'm thinking about the kids. Here's some of the kids in my life: Nephews in SoCal and Illinios, god-daughter, Fine Dining Club kids, La Jeunesse Philquique', etc.

Plastic doesn't go away. Millions of tons of it gathers in the ocean to foul the eco-system, whether it's as whole items or smaller and smaller toxic bits that choke and poison the creatures that eat them.

There's 4 R's you can use: Re-think, Reuse, Reduce, Recycle. The most important might be "Re-think". It might take awhile to organize a governmental level response, so the more personal, community and corporate level responses that we can encourage, the better.

Do what you can, please. Every little bit adds up.

Walter speaks

Today's movie news: "'28 Weeks Later' is a bad movie. Take it off your Netflix list."

Whaaaaaatt?!

Dang it. The first one was so good.

*shrug*

Netflix list is now down to 381 disks.

Then and Now (and waaaay back Then)

Then:
Rumsfeld, 2/7/03: “It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.”
Cheney, 3/16/03: “I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . (in) weeks rather than months“

Now:
Abizaid, 11/1/08: "...but we shouldn't assume for even a minute that in the next 25 to 50 years the American military might be able to come home, relax and take it easy, because the strategic situation in the region doesn't seem to show that as being possible,"

Waaay back then:
Cheney, 1994: explaining that trying to take over Iraq would be a "bad idea" and would lead to a "quagmire."

Way, waaaaaay back then:
Lawrence, 1922: "War upon rebellion is messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife."


I find it difficult to imagine that these learned men, who led us into the Iraq War, did not know that there would be rebellion and that we would be there for generations. I believe that they lied.