Winter-Night Borscht

I've got to say, this was my favorite borscht yet. It manages to not be too watery, or too beety, or too meaty, or too anything! And I love the hints of bay leaf, dill, & parsley.

Start with a large soup pot & brown one pound of stew-beef (or chicken) with one chopped medium onion for ten minutes. I only used half a pound of beef. Then add 8 cups of water (I substituted one of the eight with one cup of chicken broth), one shredded half-head of cabbage, one cup of chopped beets, one chopped carrot, two chopped potatoes, one half cup pearl barley, two bay leaves & salt/pepper. Bring to a boil. Then simmer for 30 minutes.

Then add one half cup each of beet greens, fresh dill, & fresh parsley. (The first two are optional, but I thought they were great.) Simmer for another ten minutes.

I garnished with fresh parsley & plain yogurt.

We ate while watching an episode of Psych, pausing to look at each other to laugh quite often. It is filmed in Vancouver, Canada & we daydream together sometimes of living in Vancouver, Washington some day.

After dinner it was off to my parents' house... chasing away a bit of our feeling of being trapped in by recent weather & bringing us into good company beside a crackling fire.

Favorite Song (from my favorite radio station): Jez Lowe- Jack Common's Anthem

Stuffed Beets

Another simple beet salad! With these kind of recipes, we are actually becoming rather avid fans of beets.

Simply cook the beets. I baked mine, which took a long time. I feel like there has to be a better way of cooking whole beets. To bake them you wipe them off with a dry paper towel. Then you can bake them at 400 degrees for an hour. The skin will just slide off with your fingers after that.

To stuff the beets, you hollow them out with a spoon or knife. According to the recipe, you then stuff the beets with a mixture of one cup plain yogurt, one tablespoon honey, a few tablespoons of nuts, and two apples diced small.

This mixture was quite tasty, but there is more leftover than winds up in the beets. Also, now you have extra beet that you have scooped out.

You could save this for another recipe. Or, I mixed it in the remaining apple-mix, and served it as a side salad. In fact, while the stuffed beets were a treat, I feel like you would bring out the same flavors by just shredding the beets and adding them to the apple-mix.

These beets were so pretty, and I had a difficult time capturing that with the camera. The meal was sweet, but not too sweet. All in all, a good salad if you enjoy beets & apples as much as we do.

Favorite Song (on my favorite radio station during prep time): Eliza Carthy- Mr. Magnifico

Beautiful Beets

Last night we sampled the "Shredded Beet Salad". The beets were a bit difficult to shred, but they looked so shiny on the grater. And after shredding they boiled up nicely in no time. For a salad, all in all, it took more prep time than I anticipated.

I'd say this salad was all about the way the ingredients played off of each other. The parsley, beets, lemon juice, and olive oil seemed to dance with each other. That's the best I can put it.

Then for garnishes: egg, carrots, & olives. Each added to the previous ingredients their own notes in perfect harmony. (Our olives had been brined with orange rinds, adding further intrigue.)

It was one of those dishes that seemed to have many ingredients. I could even taste each one. But somehow the flavors kept winding up lost in each other in various and interesting ways.

The servings were appropriately small for such a rich & dense salad. But I'd say the recipe did in fact produce the four servings it promised.

It was a pleasant bit of interest at the start of an evening spent with entertaining folks.

Favorite Song (on my favorite radio station during prep time): Jim Moray-All You Pretty Girls