Fresh Cherry Muffins--with Roasted Beets

Roasted beets and fresh cherries are baked in a tender--and shockingly pink--muffin.

Over the weekend I realized the cherry trees in my neck of the world are ready for harvest. My first clue was walking the dogs along a sidewalk covered with what looked like  . . . well, cherries like I get at the store. I could not pause to pick any fruit up like I did when encountering plums all over the ground because when you're holding leashes to a 16 pound, a 42 pound, and a 66 pound dog your hands are already full.

Yesterday I saw a dad holding his son steady on a ladder while the kid picked cherries from their tree.[At least I assumed it was theirs. Who am I to comment on foraged fruit?] The sight reminded me that I'd been sitting on a fresh cherry recipe for nearly a year. Since I like to share muffin recipes on Mondays [and I've been spending time updating my Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient as well as adding a grilling section to my drop down menu recipe index, not plotting out the month's worth of posts] I figure today is as good a time as any.

Grab a cup of tea with these muffins--even though they have beets in them, they are delicate enough thanks to the yogurt. My kids ate them warm for breakfast and room temp for an after school snack with peanut butter and/or Nutella. Any method to get beets from the farm share into the family is a good method in my book.

For more recipes using beets, please see my Beet Recipes Collection. For more recipes using cherries, many of them dried, please see my Cherry Recipes Collection. These collections are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. I've got a Fruit board on Pinterest where I gather interesting recipes, and of course I'm sharing other bloggers' successes and my epic failures over on my FB page.

Beetloaf, a Story about a Meatloaf

Valentine's Day is coming, and I'm sharing pink food. Beets are my go to pink food coloring for that vibrant color that is surprisingly found IN nature.

This story, as all good stories do, starts with a package of beef liver. You may think that's a weird way to start a post entitled Beetloaf. Let me be clear--just because I'm calling this Beetloaf in no way implies a lack of meat. There are many excellent vegetarian loaf recipes out there and this is not one of them. This just happens to be a meatloaf that also contains beets and, as it happens on my FB page, when I post something innocuous sounding like Roasted Beet & Arugula Pizza, my friends nickname it Beet-za. Today I'm skipping the middleman and going straight to the nickname:  Beetloaf.

Now, before Robert Barker arrived in our lives I didn't know what to do with all the beef liver in the freezer. [My neighbors kept bringing me more, slipping it in the house alongside the eggs when I wasn't looking.] I looked for ways to incorporate liver into our lives, much like I look for ways to incorporate beets into our meals. I hit upon an idea--what if I used beets + liver together? I know I like pickled beets in my Open-faced Liver Postej Sandwiches, so it stands to reason that I'd like them together in the same pan. I decided to add a pound of pork sausage and a pound of ground beef to the liver + beets primarily because I'd already done a mostly vegetable meatloaf, my {48.3% Meat}Loaf, and I knew the additional meat would be a hit with the teenagers. It was--my daughter dumped ketchup on it and declared it 'acceptable' (when in doubt, ketchup is my #5 tip to get your family to eat from the farm share). My son went so far as to say it was 'good'--high praise from him--and complain after I started using all the liver for Robert Barker--that he wanted to eat more beetloaf.

BOOM! Liver + beets are in our bellies and out of the freezer. That's a big win in my book.

For other recipes using liver you're going to have to wait until I create additional categories for my Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, but there is a search function on the left sidebar in the meantime. For other recipes using beets, please see my Beet Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. For other recipes using ground beef, please see my recipe round up of 106 Food Blogger Recipes using Ground Beef.

Cranberry, Orange and Beet Salad (make it ahead in the slow cooker)

Making cranberry sauce in the slow cooker? The house smells terrific and you've got the stove free to make yet another side dish. Adding oranges, beets, and a kick of ginger? Lovely. Thanks to Alanna and her reader Karen for the inspiration.

I'm trying to squeeze the Thanksgiving side dish recipes in as fast as I can, along with some suppers to tide you over and use up your Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) turnips ahem goodies, like beets. I've been tossing beets into all sorts of savory meals lately. Beetza (my friend Dave's name for the Roasted Beet and Arugula Pizza) and Beetloaf (which isn't up on the blog yet) to name a few. However, the sweetness of a locally-grown beet really shines in something like cranberry sauce. I've got experience with this--last year I shared an alphabetical Apple/Apricot, Beet and Cranberry Sauce.

I typically roast the farm share beets before I have a plan for them. Scrub a bunch of beets, place them in a foil packet with a splash of olive oil, slide the packet onto a baking sheet. Bake in a 400 degree oven for an hour or until the packet 'gives' when you squeeze it. Sometimes gigantic beets can take nearly 2 hrs, but 1 hr is a good time to check. Let the packet cool, the slip the skins off the beets and chop to the size you desire.

Six ingredients--so simple!

Free time to play in the kitchen seems to shrink like the amount of daylight, so any time I can throw a pile of ingredients into my slow cooker and let it do the work for me I'm happy. When I read Alanna's Homemade Whole Berry Cranberry Sauce for the Slow Cooker I was inspired. Cranberry + Orange is a great combo. Beet + Orange is another great combo, like in my friend Meghan's Beet Mimosa. The idea that I could add beets without turning the whole dish a naturally unnatural color [ahem, like the Beetza or Beetloaf] was a big draw. Cranberry + Orange + Beets for the win!

I've got a little 1.5 qt slow cooker which is perfect for this application. It's also perfect for heating up leftovers while I'm ferrying kids around, so I recommend this size appliance as more than a 'one note' space waster.  Something like this Slow Cooker (Amazon affiliate link) with an added Keep Warm function, works great for soup or sloppy joes and holds enough to feed our family.

I struggled with the idea of naming this a sauce. It's not really sauce-like. Come to think of it, neither is cranberry sauce. It's really more of a guideline salad. When I looked up the definition of salad I read about a cold concoction of vegetables, fruit, and/or meat.  I figured that definition applies to this dish, so I'm calling it a salad.

If you've got beets, consider throwing some of them into this salad. It keeps for a week in the fridge, and although the execution was a failure, the concept of adding it to a rolled pizza as shown at the bottom of the post [come! Look at my failures!] is a good one. For other recipes using beets, please see my Beet Recipe Collection.

Bacon, Beef and Beet Chili

A hearty chili of beef, beets, and tomatoes--flavored with bacon.

Chili is good for hockey season. When I have an afternoon available I'll make a pot of chili on a back burner while processing vegetables or making another dinner. The chili goes into the fridge for later in the week, then on the appointed day hangs out in the crock pot on Warm.  All day.  I just need someone {my sled hockey player} to grate the cheese and set out the fixings, and it's time to eat.

See the bowl in these photos? I got it at Hot Soups for a Cool Cause, a fundraiser for the Dayton International Peace Museum. My folks and I attend the twice-yearly events since their visits happened to coincide. With my donation I not only got an assortment of delicious soups and excellent conversation--I got to keep the bowl! I was amazed to learn that the potter lives a few blocks away--small world. I did not have this chili at the fundraiser (though I had a tasty borscht last month at the Cool Soups for a Hot Cause event). Instead, I pulled it out of my ear--doing a bit of a riff on my Acorn Squash, Beet and Sweet Potato Chili.

Our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farmers are great at growing beets.  The family is just not that into beets, despite 8 years of exposure to this delicious vegetable. No matter. If we get beets in the farm share, we get beets in our bellies. We eat what is in the fridge. Or else!

This time, bacon was my vehicle to facilitate the beets' acceptance. A little bacon goes a long way, flavor-wise, so I am glad to incorporate some into this chili. I'm gratified that the kids like chili--it's easy to cook, reheats well, and can assimilate a bunch of vegetables.

I've updated my Visual Recipe Index--for more recipes featuring beets, check out my Beet Recipes Collection!

Roasted Beet & Arugula Pizza

Roasted beets nestled between shreds of fresh mozzarella and gorgonzola on a béchamel sauce bed, then topped with spicy pepperoni or salty ham. Once baked, scatter fresh arugula across and serve.

It's been a while since I've shared a pizza recipe. I've been creating pizzas nearly every weekend, because my housemates have, ahem,  Expectations, but I'm not always taking photos and jotting down recipe notes. This recent pizza, using beets and arugula from our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share, looked interesting enough to snap a few photos.

Have you ever been to a book signing?  I sorta went to one recently. In fact, I accompanied my spouse to the signing of an author he enjoys--John Scalzi.  The signing was at an independent bookstore and I happily curled up in the cookbook section--after reading all about becoming Amish in a survivalist magazine!  I'm always up for a trip to the bookstore--I can entertain myself for hours and I always learn something new. While reading I had half an ear listening to the author's presentation, and this guy is good. He read some excerpts from  . . . [something, I dunno, it could have been his newest book or could have been his collected works--like I said I was listening with half an ear] and in between excerpts he'd give a general overview of how the signing would proceed for the ever-growing audience "tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em, tell 'em, tell 'em what you told 'em" style. His reading style was expressive, confident, and relaxed. During the Q&A he was both thoughtful and funny. Even though my spouse had a Kindle copy of the newest book, he picked up a copy to donate to our library.

While I was enjoying this presentation-by-an-author-I'd-never-read**, I was also flipping through cookbooks and gathering inspiration. One pizza cookbook (from a restaurant in NYC with a celebrity chef and a catchy title that I cannot find on Amazon) had a section on basic pizza sauces to have on hand. The list included tomato, pesto, and béchamel. 

Béchamel . . . hmm. I'd just been reading about sauces in Melt: The Art of Macaroni and Cheese (Amazon affiliate link) since I've had a terrific hankering for mac and cheese this Fall.  It is just butter, flour, and warm milk--I can make that.  Heck, I've been making it and calling it a Basic White Sauce, out of my 1950 Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook (like I did in my Creamed Swiss Chard with Back Bacon here)! I thought to myself 'Self, why have I never put a basic white sauce on a pizza before?'. After I read that béchamel sauce keeps for a few days, I figured I could play around with it and here we are.

I've updated my Visual Recipe Index--for more recipes using beets, look here. For more recipes using arugula, look here.

Chocolate Beet Milkshake (#IceCreamWeek)

Welcome to day 2 of Ice Cream Week 2014! This year the event is hosted by Kim of Cravings of a Lunatic and Susan of The Girl in the Little Red Kitchen. We have teamed up with 25 amazing bloggers to bring you ice cream treats all week long. It's an epic week full of frozen treats, beets [wait, what? beets?], and a giveaway!

Go Jacks! Let's get the new school year off to a great start!

Humans crave connection with other humans. Vegetables can forge that connection.

This may seem a strange way to start headnotes on a chocolate beet milkshake recipe, but I'll circle around and it will make sense, I promise. This will be especially true if you're a person who eats seasonally from a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share or one who succumbs to the bright colors of the farmer's market and ends up with way more vegetables than you planned.

A couple of weeks ago I took my son to sled hockey camp. We were fortunate that several Big Names in the sport were in attendance. My son held gold medals from Sochi 2014 and Vancouver 2010 and skated alongside the gracious athletes who earned them. The last morning of camp I met the guest coach. Conversation quickly turned to food, as it always does around me, and he shared memories of the meals he'd eaten while in Sochi and in other international travels. Then I mentioned something about our farm share, and this man said "I'm looking forward to fresh corn".

BOOM! All of a sudden this guy went from, in my eyes, an internationally famous coach (with whom I had little in common) to a fellow seasonal eater. I, too, know the feeling of anticipating the vegetables of the upcoming season. In late winter I crave the fresh greens of Spring, in Summer I crave tomatoes, and in Fall I'm crave sweet potatoes and winter squash [winter is the time of the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve, my freezer, and my pantry].
Local, seasonal vegetables forged a connection.

Blueberry Beet Honey Oat Muffins

Blueberries and roasted beets are sweetened with honey in a multigrain muffin

Blueberry muffins are one of the most iconic types of muffins.  [You won't find any icons on this blog, other than my teeny tiny social media icons next to the print button at the bottom of this post.] I was shocked to realize that of the 26 muffin recipes I've posted on this blog, only one of them contains blueberries.

It also contains beets, and it's a pretty sweet muffin what with the white chocolate chips and all (Red, White and Blue Muffins recipe here). I wanted to share a less 'treat' muffin.

 I've got beets from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share, and adding some roasted beets to the party in the blender [not to be confused with this party in a blender] accentuates the color of the blueberries without overwhelming the flavor.

Why do I use a blender? My son is not a big "whole blueberries in baked goods" fan, so for these muffins, just like these Sweet Corn and Blueberry Waffles, I use my blender.  We all get the goodness of blueberries without anyone biting into an undesired big fat berry.

I'm glad to announce my 27th muffin recipe, and second beet+blueberry muffin in a row, Blueberry Beet Honey Oat Muffins.  I use honey, not sugar, in this recipe, which makes me think about how "real sugar" is now a valued item in soft drinks, yet perversely still taboo in "healthy" recipes. Whatever. While they are lightly sweet on their own, these muffins also taste delicious served warm with lemon curd.
These soaked oatmeal muffins require at least an hour long pre-preparation soak, but you can always prep a container of oatmeal and buttermilk days ahead and store in your fridge like I've shown here.

Red, White & Blue Muffins {Muffin Monday}

Roasted beets and strawberry jam provide the red, while white chocolate chips and blueberries round out the trio for a festively-colored and tasty snack

It always bugs me, as someone who thinks local produce tastes better than stuff trucked in from Off, to see Red, White and Blue recipes using fresh strawberries alongside fresh raspberries and fresh blueberries.  Why?  Wherever I've lived, those berries are not simultaneously in season.  Late spring is the time of the strawberry, and the raspberries and blueberries come along later in Summer.  If I'm going to combine berries, I'll need to use some that are put up (by freezing or by jammin') so that I can get the best flavor.

Beets are one of the vegetables that we don't devour within days of getting them in the farm share [beet greens, however, I adore and gobble up ASAP]. Beets are long-storing, though, and freeze beautifully after roasting, so in the winter I'll often grab a bag of roasted beets out to thaw and then decide what to do with them. 

Adding roasted beets to muffin batter makes a naturally vibrant result [even in savory form]. I wanted to make a colorful muffin so a beet base seemed like a good way to start. Strawberry jam for summer flavor, plus blueberries and white chocolate chips, make this muffin on the sweet side for my baking--but with only ¼ cup sugar it's still a snack I'm jiggy with feeding my kids.

For other recipes using beets, please see my Beet Recipes Collection. For other recipes using blueberries, please see my Blueberry Recipes Collection. These collections are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. After typing so much to give you A Peek into My Process I'm going to jump right to the recipe.

Orange-Spiked Beet and Walnut Spread

Toasted walnuts, roasted** beets, and a kick of orange juice brightens up this vegan spread

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If you read Wednesday's post and thought I sounded conflicted about posting so many meat-containing recipes in a row, you're very perceptive.  I've got a Guinness-soaked easy meal, a terrific Thai cold-busting soup, and a Fast From The Farm Share supper on deck--but they all involve meat.  And I feel the need to share a vegan recipe in the midst of all this meat so here's one that's been percolating on my mental back burner for a while.

Why do I say percolating?  Well, the recipe I wanted to make just wasn't working for me.  I kept trying variations within the parameters I'd established, and when I hit upon the final concoction that worked I realized I didn't have the exact proportions to share with you.  So I'm going to explain the concept, give you some measurements as a jumping off point, and leave it at that.  I mean, with 6 ingredients [including salt and pepper] there's plenty of 'taste and adjust' for each of us to do.

I'm always on the lookout for new ways to love beets from my CSA farm share, so when I got an email from goop including a recipe for beet and walnut spread I mentally filed it under the 'Beet Recipes to Try' section of my brain.

Don't tell me you don't have a Beet Recipes to Try area of your brain? Pity.

This Beet and Walnut Dip is my inspiration, and I am sure it is delicious, but I a) was running low on tahini and had some hummus to make and b) desired to have another tahini-free appetizer in my spread.  So I took the beets, walnuts, olive oil and salt from that recipe, and was trying . . .  trying . . . trying . . . to make something other than BeetyWalnutButter.  I failed. I was about to grab the goat cheese and de-veganify it when I remembered how well beets and oranges go together (hello, Beet Juice Mimosas!). I grabbed some freshly squeezed Hamlin orange juice from the Band Fruit Fundraiser, threw the concoction back into the food processor to incorporate the juice, and DONE!  The orange juice and olive oil emulsify to fluff up the BeetyWalnutButter into an Orange-spiked Beet and Walnut Spread.

As much as I love my Beet and Goat Cheese Spread, I was looking for a vegan addition to my Awesome Vegetable Apps and Snacks collection (link to my Pinterest board) and this one works great.  I like it on carrots or crackers and spread on toasted sourdough bread in a sandwich.  I think it would be delicious topped with sautéed mushrooms, as the earthy flavors of beets and mushrooms make a nice pairing in my favorite Danish smørrebrød:  liverpostej.

If you've got beets, walnuts, an orange and a bit of time to use the oven, as well as a food processor or amazing knife skills, you can enjoy this vegan spread today.  It makes a colorful addition to an appetizer table.

For more recipes using beets, please see my Beet Recipes Collection. It's part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, or the garden abundance. More recipes! I'm pinning more recipes to my Pinterest boards, follow me there. If you like behind-the-scenes shots, please follow me on Instagram. When I encounter an article that makes me think or makes me laugh, I share it on my Facebook page--please follow me there. Want to know How to Use This Blog?

Red Cabbage, Leek, Brat and Beet Skillet Supper

A hearty satisfying skillet supper of cabbage, leeks, apples, and beets seasoned with bratwurst, maple syrup, apple cider and spices. I could say 'low carb' and 'real' if you like those words.

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If you're a regular visitor to the blog [thank you!] you know all about the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve in a cold corner of my breakfast nook.  That's where I store the pumpkins, acorn squash, butternut and buttercup squash from the Fall farm share, as well as the shorter-storing onions, potatoes, garlic and sweet potatoes. Corn gets blanched and frozen, summer squash and carrots get shredded and frozen, and beets get roasted and frozen. Turnips just get refrigerated until my spouse convinces me to make pasties again. This way I feed my family from our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share twelve months of the year, even though we only get fresh vegetables seven months of the year.**

Simon and Vincent (Oliver and Crystal the pig are missing) showing off the initial SWSR.

Even though I enjoyed a week of sunshine in Florida, last week during HashtagOrangeWeek, winter has its grip on my home and I still want crave hearty fare. This recipe is a hearty skillet supper combining many of the items in a typical Fall CSA share that can be found throughout the winter.  I was inspired by this CSA Cookoff segment done by Jennifer of Homegrown.org. I thought it would be a great way to stuff beets a bunch of veggies and a sprinkle of meat into my kids.  Score!  Today I'll share a skillet full of flavor we affectionally dubbed Hot Pink Mess.

Boy, if I were a young hip blogger, this would be the name of some over-the-top decadent dessert or fried appetizer that I'd make and eat after stumbling home in the wee hours. In reality, a humble fried egg sandwich appeals to me in the wee hours, more so than chocolate. Though Meghan's granola comes a close second for nighttime snacks. 

For more recipes using beets, please see my Beet Recipes Collection. For recipes using cabbage, please see my Cabbage Recipes Collection. For more recipes using leeks, please see my Recipes Using Leeks Collection. These collections are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from their farm share box, or from what's at the farmer's market, or on sale at the grocery store, or what grew best in the garden. I'm pinning more recipes on my Pinterest boards, follow me there. I'm sharing a carefully curated look at the world's most handsome Basset hound, Robert Barker behind the scenes on my Instagram feed, follow me there. Interesting articles get shared on my Facebook page, follow me there. Want to know How to Use This Blog?

Quick Pickled Beet and Herring Salad

A quick side dish or simple lunch of roasted beets tossed with picked herring in wine sauce. Two ingredients and a few minutes to throw it together and you have a vibrant bowl of flavor.

You didn't think I'd let a Valentine's day go by without beets, did you?

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There are many ways to show love.

Even though this is a food blog, I do other things besides cook to show my love.  Earlier this week I showed my love for my spouse by cleaning out the refrigerator.  True, I did get a side bonus by having a clean refrigerator, free of unknown items science experiments moldering about in the back.  But, if left to my own devices, I would have spent that time working on a different project.

I chose to show love instead.

Last year, while writing about the holiday of love, I encouraged you to show your love to  your family and friends by preparing a pizza for vegans, vegetarians, or omnivores.

On Monday, I asked you to show your love to hungry children you'll never meet by donating $10 to #feedsouthafrica.  If you didn't have a chance to donate, you can still do so here.  We're more than halfway to our goal of providing 100 kids lunch for an entire year, and if each of the participating food bloggers could get just one reader to donate--we'd be there!

Today, I want to talk about showing love to yourself.

I am the only one in my household who likes pickled herring and pickled beets.  Sure, my family will eat the herring with me on Christmas Eve, and they eat beets in a variety of dishes, but they don't like it like I do.  So I very rarely eat this, even though I enjoy it.

This dish is one way I treat myself, perhaps a winter version of my Sautéed Beet Greens and Spring Onions with a fried egg.  I can roast [technically, I'm oven steaming] a bunch of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share beets at once, freeze some for later use, and chop up one to make myself a bowl of this salad.  I like to eat it for breakfast, lunch, or a snack.  The rich red color delights me as much as the briny, tangy taste, and I thought it would be pretty for a Valentine's day recipe.

If you've never tried pickled herring in wine sauce--only buy a teeny tiny jar to start, or get a bit at a deli counter.  It's a taste I acquired after many years of starting our Christmas Eve smorgasbord glaring at the pieces of fish I'd been served, and daintily eating a bit of lettuce and some pickled onion while impatiently waiting to ditch the first plate and get to the good stuff--Swedish Meatballs.  My palate and I have matured, though, and now I buy giant jars of pickled herring at Costco and I treat myself to the whole jar--one bowl at a time.

For more recipes using beets, please see my Beet Recipes Collection. It's part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating seasonally from the farm share, the farmer's market, garden abundance and grocery store sales. For more recipe inspiration I'm pinning good stuff on Pinterest, follow me there. I'm sharing articles that catch my eye on Facebook, follow me there. I'm showing a carefully curated peek behind the scenes on my Instagram feed, follow me there. Want to know How to Use This Blog?

ABC: Apple/Apricot, Beet, Cranberry Sauce--Quick Take

A colorful side dish of cranberries with roasted beets and dried apricots simmered in a sweetened apple cider/orange juice broth. A delicious addition to holiday meals and a terrific way to use farm share beets that gets the whole family to dig in.

New photos for 2015, same tasty recipe!

I'll freely admit I'm a fan of the can.  Not the jellied cranberry sauce (though I'm sure it has its uses).  I have no issue, however, with canned whole berry cranberry sauce.  It's fine. Want a recipe for a doctored up can of cranberry sauce? Here's my Semi-homemade Cranberry Pineapple Pecan Salad.

I also love cranberry-orange relish, and cranberry-apple sauce.  Whole Foods made a cranberry-beet-apricot dish on their salad bar years ago that my mom re-created.  I decided to combine all of those into this side. It's sweet but not too sweet, tangy but not too out there.  And the color is freakishly vibrant.

For more recipes using apples or apple cider, please see my Apples/Apple Cider Recipes Collection. For more recipes using beets, please see my Beet Recipes Collection. For more recipes using cranberries, please see my Cranberry Recipe Collection. This is the only recipe in the Apricot Recipe Collection so don't bother clicking over there. These collections are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating locally and seasonally from the farm share, the farmer's market, and seasonal abundance. I've got even more recipe ideas on my Pinterest boards, follow me there to see them. I'm also sharing new recipes on my FB page so check that out as well. Want to know how to use this blog?

Potato, Beet, and Leek Soup (And How To Make Vegetable Stock)

A thick vegan or vegetarian or omnivorous soup of potatoes, beets and leeks

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My spouse is a vegetarian, at least while he's away on his all-expense paid work trip to an exotic foreign locale.  If you think it's ironic, considering I just shared a post on 106 Recipe Ideas Using Ground Beef because I have 110 pounds of ground beef in the freezer, you're in good company.

Since the rest of the household is omnivorous, I've been experimenting with ways to create meals we can all enjoy.

I've heard homeschoolers will use the Bus Stop Method of teaching--introducing a subject, then dropping off students to work at different levels while continuing to teach that subject.  I consider recipes like this, and my Vegan/Vegetarian/Omnivorous Valentine's Pizza and my Acorn Squash, Beet, and Sweet Potato Chili, to be similar to the Bus Stop Teaching.  Call it Bus Stop Cooking (though bear in mind I am cooking in my kitchen, not at a bus stop, and I have access to running water, an oven, stove, and all that).

 The base of this recipe is a vegetable stock, slowly cooked in the slow cooker (is that redundant?) all day (and in fact I kicked this batch over to Keep Warm and let it go overnight since I didn't feel like dealing with it in the evening).  I like mushrooms in my vegetable stock, so when I realize that I'm not going to finish a package I'll toss them in with the rest of the cast of vegetables into a Vegetarian Soup Pack in the freezer.

The inspiration for this soup came from Alanna's Greens 'n All Beet Soup.  I love the flavor of that soup, but my kids aren't crazy about chunks of vegetables, and lately with my obsession with sautéed beet greens there just wasn't any left for soup.  So I figured I'd adapt Alanna's recipe with the veggies I had.  Once I simmered and pureed the soup, I had a rick, thick, vegan bowl of yumminess (shown above).  That's Bus Stop #1.  Adding a dollop (love that word) of sour cream makes a nice vegetarian bowl (shown below left).  Bus Stop #2.  Adding a pound of browned and drained ground beef to the pot means that we've arrived at the final destination--a soup for omnivores [aka another way to get my kids to eat beets.  With beef.]

I don't know if my spouse will continue as a vegetarian when he returns.  He says he'll eat "happy meat", so I've sourced a "locally-raised on locally-grown and -ground GMO free feed" turkey for Thanksgiving.  I do know that I will continue this Bus Stop Cooking method, because it tastes good!

Open-faced Shaved Beet Sandwiches

I don't know why I'm spending my lunches waxing rhapsodically about beets and the farmers that grow them, but here I go again.  You know that when you get beets you should eat the greens pretty quickly, but the beets themselves will hang out in your fridge for a while.  You can shred and freeze them for later use, you can roast them and put them on or in a pizza, or you can make a tasty appetizer.  What I recently learned was that you can also love them raw.  All thanks to Martha.

Even though I work at a thrift shop, I'm still pretty frugal about shopping there.  I always check the clearance section when I get to work, and rarely scan the racks (oh who am I kidding--I check out the kitchen section all. the. time).  Whenever I see good magazines in the clearance rack, I snap them up.  I mean, it's the same thing year after year;  people always want to declutter their space and find new crock pot or grill recipes.  Only the trendy colors and vegetables (talking 'bout you, kale) change.

This is why I bought a couple of old issues of Martha Stewart Living--I figured I could find an idea or two for seasonal foods.  Late one night, while reading the March 1998 issue in between an article about building your own stone wall and an article about ordering seeds and bulbs from foreign catalogs, I read about shaving raw beets and tossing them with a balsamic vinaigrette.  The next morning I dutifully carried down the March 2004 issue and prepared to follow the recipe.  (Did you notice it was a different issue?  You're doing better than me.  I thought I'd hallucinated the whole balsamic-marinated shaved beet thing. What, you don't hallucinate about shaving beets? What do you hallucinate about?)  Because I was feeling lazy, I didn't walk back upstairs to get the correct year, I just winged it.  Then I winged it again the next day since it was so good.

This is easy, this is delicious, this is raw . . . give it a try.  The worst that will happen is your kitchen will look like an abattoir.  I've got a dark counter so I have no idea how bad it really could look.

Sautéed Beet Greens and Spring Onions with Sherry Vinegar

(Subtitle:  A soul-satisfying meal)

If you just want to know how to make a fast, simple, healthy and colorful side dish using fresh beet greens and spring onions, or how to take that side dish and make it a complete meal by topping it with an egg, skip over this next bit.  As physically satisfying as this combination of foods is though, when I paused and thought about it, this meal was satisfying on a soul-ullar level as well.

I've shaken the hands that planted the beet seeds in open flats back in February, the hands that transplanted the young seedlings to cell packs, the hands that moved the tender beet plants into the fertile soil of the hoop house in April, and the hands that harvested those beets last week.  [I deliberately left out weeding, because Farmer Josh tells me that they plant the beets densely so they shade out any potentially-germinating weeds.]  I've shaken the hands that gathered the eggs, like generations have before them, on Keener Farm.  I've even scratched the ears of the dogs and cats that live on the farms where these foods grew. 

All of those experiences align in this bite of my lunch, and that makes for a much deeper connection to my food.  I like that.  If you have the opportunity (and this is the second state I've lived in where I've found this opportunity), try it some time.  See that Local Harvest gadget in the upper left corner?  Find a farmer near you by searching your zip code.

Have your meal satisfy you on multiple levels.

Horseradish-Beet Muffins (Monday Muffins!)

I don't normally make savory muffins.  It's not that I have anything against a savory muffin.  Some of my favorite muffins are savory!  I like nothing better than a cheddar bacon cornmeal muffin with my green tomato chili.  I just don't think of savory first when I am preparing to make muffins.

But my mom did.

I'd mixed a cup of shredded beets into my soaked oatmeal muffin base, but was dithering over which direction to go from there.  Mom was visiting and suggested horseradish.  Conveniently, I had a jar of horseradish powder.

This savory muffin was delicious served warm with a touch of buttery spread.  I'm thinking of using this in a pink-themed Valentine meal--but I'm stumped on the entree.

Roasted Beet, Caramelized Onion, and Goat Cheese Pizza (Pizza Night!)

Last Friday I had a whole lot to say before I got to the pizza recipe.  Today I'm keeping it short and sweet.  Which do you prefer?

It wasn't enough to do one (or three) beet pizzas.  No, I have more beet tricks up my <hopelessly stained> sleeve.  I suspected, from this appetizer, that I'd like the combination of roasted beets and goat cheese on a pizza.  I hoped that the addition of caramelized onions would punch it up a bit.

I was not disappointed.  Neither was my spouse.  The kids . . . didn't volunteer to try this one.

This is a pretty pizza, all neon-pink beet juice bleeding onto the white goat cheese.  Could be cute for a Valentine's day pink-themed meal, if you don't want to go all beet-crusty on your loved ones.  I'll try it again when my arugula (rocket) is ready just to see how that looks/tastes.  Meantime, the garlic oil was still a nice base for the beets.

A Valentine's Pizza to Show Your Love (Vegan, Vegetarian, or Omnivores: Pizza Night!)

Love.  In what I hope is the middle of my life, my thoughts on Love are broader than they used to be.  I've always told my kids there is no single person that is the one for each of them.  I mean, if you happen to take a different path one day and not meet that person, well, what then?  I think respect, courtesy, and communication are very important building blocks of love.  (Yes, desire and other things are important too.  On to food.)

Vegetarian option on the left, omnivore option on the right.

One of the ways I show my love for my family is by cooking for them.  I'm not alone in this!  I consider myself fortunate that I also like to cook and am curious about new foods/new recipes, but even if I were just making the same seven staple dinners each week I'd be putting love into each meal.  In fact, when we moved into our home <and I had a Groupon to use> I had the Penzey's Spices slogan made into a wall decal over my kitchen window.

My kids think the font I chose is a bit wonky, and run around saying "Book them tasty food!" Little darlings.

I meet more and more folks who live with, and love, people with different dietary habits.  My friend Lorin at the VeganAsana, wrote an excellent post on this topic.  If you are a vegetarian cooking meat for a carnivore--that action shows your love and respect. If you are a carnivore choosing the vegan buttery spread while doing the family grocery shopping--that action shows your love and respect.  Sitting down to a meal together, a meal that contains a variety of dishes that can work with everyone's dietary choices, sounds simple but really is an expression of love and acceptance of those you love.

Even though I feed a house of omnivores, this pizza is an expression of my love for anyone reading who lives with and cooks for those with different dietary habits.  Like with the bus stop method of home schooling, this is the bus stop method of cooking.  You can stop the pizza where it suits you or your family's dietary habits.  This pizza works for vegans, vegetarians, or beet-curious carnivores.

A mere 1/2 cup of finely shredded beets turns the dough shockingly pink.  I like it.

I freely admit that I made the beet crust purely so I could blog about it. [Having shredded beets put up in the freezer played no small part either.]  I was was thinking it would be something neat for Valentine's day.  Then I remembered the taste of the Beet and Horseradish muffins that will appear on this blog on a future Muffin Monday.  Having had those muffins, I know that my mom was right and beets pair well with horseradish.  Horseradish, in turn, pairs well with roast beef.  So it wasn't a big jump to get a Roast Beef on a Beet Crust Pizza drizzled with Horseradish Cream.  The trickier bit was the flavors in the middle, and I am grateful to the males in my household for that.

My spouse and son kept asking for another pizza with fresh mozzarella, and on the drive home from sled hockey practice one night my son and I created the layers of this pizza.  In our heads, at least.  Now that I know to keep an eye out for the upcoming sell-by dates and snap up balls of fresh mozzarella as they are marked down in the fancy cheese area of the grocery store, I am happy to oblige their desire for fresh cheese.

Thus far we have a shockingly pink beet crust with bright white discs of cheese, and I thought roasted garlic oil would be an excellent sauce in between those layers.  Conveniently, in my fruit and veg freezer, I had a lone packet of caramelized onions next to the roasted garlic so I grabbed that, too.
Here's how this shakes out.

A Valentine's day dish for the vegans you love:

Caramelized Onions and Roasted Garlic Oil on a Beet Crust Flatbread

A Valentine's day dish for the vegetarians you love:

Caramelized Onions, Fresh Mozzarella, and Roasted Garlic on a Beet Crust Pizza

A Valentine's day dish for the omnivore or beet-curious carnivore you love:

Roast Beast Pizza with Fresh Mozzarella and Roasted Garlic on a Beet Crust, Drizzled with Horseradish Cream

Yikes.  That sounds ambitious.  Let's start with the basis of it all--the beet crust.  I prefer making my crust a day or three before use--it stretches so nicely when it's not brand spanking new.

Acorn Squash, Beet, and Sweet Potato Chili: One Beginning, Two Endings (Bean-Free Chili for Vegans or with Beef for Carnivores)

Could be vegan chili on the left, chili for carnivores on the right.

One of the pots of chili you see here was what I set out to make.  The other one was the surprise mid-way through.

You see, it all started when I had a bite of my spouse's chili at Tom+Chee in Newport, KY.  It was smooth, meaty, and topped with a bit of blue cheese.  Yum!  I love that restaurant.

I like my Green Tomato Garlic Chili, and I like all the chunky and bean-y chili I have had.  In fact, I don't think I've met a chili I didn't like.  But I wanted to try my hand at making a smooth, meaty chili.

No chunks (the kids tolerate smooth better than chunky anyway) and no beans (thanks to New Year's day and a vat of Ham and Bean soup I'd had beans 8 out of 9 days of 2013 and frankly I needed a break).  What does that leave?  The Strategic Winter Squash Reserve, of course.

I started by roasting a small 1 pound acorn squash and a small sweet potato.  I was making a small batch, because after the giant vat of soup I really didn't want gallons of chili leftovers.  Then I set those aside and browned a pound of ground beef in my 3 quart saucepan.  I knew I wanted a smooth chili, but I didn't want to attack my beef with the immersion blender, so at this point I drained and set the beef aside.

If I were cooking for vegans as well as carnivores, I would wash the saucepan at this point.
I was just cooking for the family, so I added onions and some of my freezer stash carrots/celery/parsley to the pan (using the remnants of grease instead of oil) and sautéed.  I was thinking about how, when making Indian food, you sauté the spices until they are fragrant before adding the simmering liquids, so I decided to add the spices next.  Annemarie of RealFoodRealDeals made a squash chili and her recipe appeared in my inbox just as I was debating for which spices to use, so I went with her spicing suggestions.  I remembered my cousin Cindy (the cousin Cindy I've friended on FB but never met) telling me she adds beets to her tomato sauce so when I was grabbing a pack of slow-roasted tomatoes from the freezer I picked up a bag of shredded beets, too.  I tossed those in to simmer with the veggies, then I added some stock.  If I were cooking for vegans, I'd use vegetable stock or Penzey's vegetable soup base.  I used chicken stock instead, added a bay leaf, and it simmered away happily for an hour.  Since (did I mention) I wanted a smooth chili, I removed the bay leaf, grabbed my immersion blender and smoothed it all up.

Then I tasted the chili.  Dang, it's pretty good right now!

If you are serving vegans, move some of the chili to a slow cooker or saucepan over low heat to simmer quietly until serving time.  Because it was just us, I added back in most of the beef and simmered the whole lot on low another hour.  Then another hour because my spouse worked late.
The result was a smooth, thick, tomato-ey meaty chili.