Friday Bites #2: Beets!!

Until about 2 years ago, I viewed the beets as an artificially colored vegetable that comes out of a can and is usually cut with funny ridges to resemble a potato chip. Beets always looked appaulingly bright, like sweet and sour chicken. It wasn’t until eating the beet salad at Lucy’s Table, that I discovered how amazing beets really are. Inspired by this eye-opening eating experience, I attempted last week to recreate the same salad as best as I could from memory.

In the end, I’m quite pleased with this salad. It’s very easy to put together, and packs all the fresh sweet flavor of a fresh, roasted root. The below instructions are more of a guide then specific instructions.

Ingredients:
1 firm but ripe pear
4 beets (it’s fun to mix golden and red)
Balsamic vinegar
Olive oil
Shallots
Goat cheese (though I noticed that lots of people tend to pair beets with feta which I’m sure would also be delicious. I’m just not a huge fan of feta).

· Remove the greens from the beets. Roast the beets until tender, about 1 hour at 400F. A good way to do this I think is to put them between two layers of foil, drizzled with a little olive oil and salt.

· Let beets cool. Peel the skin off your beets (it really just melts off after the roasting), and slice width wise. Make similar sized slices of the pear.

· Whisk together in a 1:1 portions olive oil and balsamic and 1 finely chopped shallot.
Arrange the beets and pears as desired, and drizzle the dressing. Crumble goat cheese on
top.

Now in the future, I would consider adding slices of blood orange to this, but that amount of amazing color might be too much! Also, I’m pretty sure that a clever person could find just the right lettuce to put under all of this. As well, I’m pretty sure that the dressing could be livened up, but this was so delicious and simple.

If anyone has tried a beet salad of their own, I would love to hear about your success and recommendations.

photo from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fotodawg

Friday bites

Fridays, as a general rule, tend not to bite. I, however, like to bite things on Fridays. And those things include cookies.

Allow me to take a moment away from Yardiness, to talk about something that has really blossomed in this house: our cooking. It seems that both D and I have greatly improved our skills in the last 8-9 months. It’s not that we needed a compass to negotiate the wilds of the kitchen before—but there is nothing like a wide, slate counter, a deep sink, and a completely functional stove and over to spark the imagination. Not to mention a budget and conscientious lifestyle that doesn’t allow eating out as often as we are wont to do.

In honor of this—we’re going to try a new little experiment. We both love to cook, and we enjoy taking pictures of food. Each Friday we’re going to attempt to integrate a little bit of food blogdom into Casa Bloom. My, we ARE getting domestic, aren’t we?

My first foray into the world wide culinary web starts with Peanut Butter cookies. Last weekend, I made a rather divine batch of Peanut Butter cookies (if I do say so myself!). I don’t make cookies often, but when I do, it’s usually because I’m craving them like nobody’s business. These cookies were on my mind for at least a week. Slightly chewy, slightly crumbly, moist and dry all at once (Oh, the madness! How is it POSSIBLE?) the recipe for these delights is the old Betty Crocker staple—complete with crisscrossed fork marks on top. I just substituted 1/4 C butter instead of the shortening the recipe calls for.

(Peanut butter cookies, a la Ariel. YUM they dissappeared fast!)

So why talk about cookies? I feel like the success I had in pulling these together is the result of the “three secrets” for making these cookies (and, as I am learning, ANY cookies. And I should share those secrets because they turned out divine. Read on.

#1: do NOT over mix. Beat the hell out of your wet ingredients, mix in your soda, salt, and powders, and get that all blended together harmoniously, and then, only at the very last minute incorporate your flour. Don’t mix it very much, and use a broad, wide spoon or spatula—no forks!—to combine them until they are just dough and no white, dry-looking flour remains. Mixing any more than in absolutely necessary makes baked good tough. People tend to work the same way, but in us we consider that sort of “toughness” a virtue rather than a pratfall.

#2: if you can find one, use a Silpat. They’re awesome. No sticking, no burned bottoms, just perfect and golden.

#3: Take them out when they are just-just-just done. Maybe even a little before they look ready—when they are still soft and squishy-feeling to the light touch. They will stiffen up as they cool.

I have made more batches of cookies in my life than I can think of. From the time I was a little girl, my mom and I always baked together. I love that I can see three of the key components for the success of this recipe right in front of me—and know why and how they work and that they are true. It’s such a liberating realization to understand that I no longer have to wait, hand on foot, on the directions from any given recipe. Armed with knowledge, I’m free to experiment and free to adapt. I’m in the world of cooking all on my own—it kind of reminds you of life. First you follow the book to the letter, then you learn to string together new words of your own. You draw inspiration from the experiences of others, and use it to your own best advantage—adapting it to fit the ingredients and personalities on hand. And thank goodness for that—I’d get bored just following the recipes every day!

The First Rose Appears

Our house becomes welcoming as spring arrives. Sun lingers on the front porch and flowers appear from the dark corners of the yard. Pictured: the first rose growing along the perimeter of the yard, and iris growing near the car park. Also, beautiful columbine in a deep purple that Ariel planted near the front of the house.

I feel like even the soil is more receptive to my ideas! (I do realize that this can be easily explained by the fact that the ground no longer freezes and various other changes occur in the spring that make the earth more conductive towards growth.) Various seeds that I planted last week are starting to sprout. The lettuce is beginning to shyly appear in thin lines. I scattered wild flower seeds in a pot in the front of the house and under my bedroom window. The flowers are just beginning to break the soil, but I’m highly suspicious that the sunflower seeds have all been dug out by one our resident squirrels. A note here: I found a wild flower mix that’s packing implied it was geared towards attention challenged children. Perfect.

Growth is so damned challenging in most aspects of life. I would like to grow into a more patient and wise person. I would like my position at work to grow into a career. I would like to grow into the kind of person who eats all of the green stuff in the fridge before it spoils. Being able to directly encourage growth in a plant is very gratifying.

No pictures today, just words.

Dear bloomers,

What a lovely thing warm temperatures and sunshine are after a winter of rain, coldness, and drear. This weekend the sun came out a little and it was warm. I basked on the slab in my jogging clothes for about an hour on Saturday. It was just lovely. There is nothing quite like the warming sensation of the sun radiating down on your legs and face. Our house’s radiant heating system comes close, but it’s just not the same. When you’re outside you sit and hold your breath hoping that the wind won’t blow and disturb the little bubble of warm you’re encapsulated in. While I was enjoying the warm sun, a little song sparrow trusted my lethargy and landed on the birdfeeder an arm’s length away. I know that they’re really just feathered little mice, but they sure are cute! We’ll see how cute they are when I see them eating my new veggies. Grrr.

So. On the flower front.

This weekend I planted more things. I’m out of control. Now we have boxes with chives, butter lettuce, broccoli and radishes. Seriously, it’s going to be salad heaven here if any of this ever takes root (haha). The arugulas are doing well, my newest line of nasturtiums has sprouted, and the peas are just shooting up! I will need to get them better sticks to climb on soon. I stuck some simple skewers in the ground with hope that they’d at least cling on to those temporarily, but they will need something more soon.

The sunflowers that I started inside are looking amazing, too. They have at least four or five inches on them already. I’m impressed. I’ll need a buoy them up with something soon, too. They’re getting a hair too tall for their current supports. Their crazy window-driven tropism doesn’t really help either. I’d take them outside already, but they’re still succulent enough looking that I don’t want something to have them for a snack.

I do have one unfortunate thing to report today… it looks like one of the neighborhood kids thought it would be fun to whack the heck out of one of our trees. Unfortunately, it’s on the other side of the sidewalk, so it’s difficult to protect (unlike the one in our yard). I saw it this morning, and I hope it doesn’t suffer any permanent damage or catch a tree disease as a result of this woeful aggression. The reminder that other people don’t share my same degree of respect and reverence for trees and/or the natural world somehow never ceases to surprise me. Of course, when I was a kid I whacked on trees with sharp metal things, too. I never thought twice about it, either. It must be something you grow out of. If you were somehow able to tabulate it, I wonder just how much damage kids do to things in the world, not knowing about the permanence or nature of their actions?

All We Need is Science

As some of you may know, I am a plant killer with a brown/desiccation thumb. This spring, I am attempting to change my nature and grow things instead of kill them. I’ve tried to overcome my deficiency by using intuition when dealing with plants, and apparently, my instincts are all wrong. For instance, I once had a woman for whom I was house sitting show me around her house and try to gently teach me how to determine when a plant needs watering. She would say helpful things like, “See, the leaves of this plant look slightly duller and wilted. It needs water” The plants all looked identical to me.

This spring, I will attempt to hone a new approach to my gardening: science. Attempting to employ this new technique, I went out to examine pansies (or at least I think they were pansies) that I planted this spring that are now flowerless and approaching brown. Oh well, this must be a bad season for pansies, right? The state of the flowers struck me as particularly strange since very similar flowers planted nearby by my roommate are thriving and more beautiful than ever!

I planted the flowers under an overhang of the house, and while during planting I realized that this meant I would need to water them regularly, the flowers always appeared wet so I didn’t bother. This week, science compelled me to get on my hands and knees (sans magnify glass) to take a closer look at the sad flower remains. Apparently, the flowers –looked- wet due to the mud that had splashed onto them during heavy rain fall. So essentially, I never watered the flowers and I covered them with mud.

The mysteries of nature are revealing themselves to me.

Stepping out of the winter slump.

It’s amazing to me how much more I enjoy little Casa Bloom when the weather is nice. Obviously, we’ve been absent from this blog all winter, stewing and whining about our muddy, funny little house. In front of the house, the yard was a pit of mud, rotting walnut detritus, and the garbage that sketchy people threw over our fence when they were passing by. The back was a cold, slippery wet slab of concrete, complete with a rotting vegetable garden that never did much of anything late last summer/fall, a bird feeder that scattered seed all over the world, and a hibernating hanging basket that I always smacked my head on when I tried to stay under the eaves and out of the rain as I took the trash out. But then March, April, and now May marched forward, and slowly but surely the slab became less slippery, the bog out front started to dry up, the grass began to grow (and grow, and grow, and grow!), and bluebells burst out all around the edges of the yard. Suddenly the house looked a little less “Skidmark” and a little more “Bloom.”

Today is the first of May, and I can happily say that project Summer Bloom is well underway.

As the sunny weekends have increased, so has D and my interest in being out-of-doors. Two or three weeks ago I scrubbed off the slab, and wiped down our patio furniture. D bought us a nifty new mower and whipped the grass into shape. I tied back the roses that were threatening to devour anyone walking near them in the yard. I moved my hopeful little seedlings off the kitchen windowsill, and into long, low pots outside. I bought a rosemary plant to replace the one that desiccated over the winter (under the eaves, it received no rain… whoops). And now we’re full-head, full-tilt, rolling, tumbling, and rocketing our way into and out of spring.

There are too many topics that I want to address in-depth, so I will begin by talking about a couple of them briefly—you can expect greater substance as the weeks go by. Let’s just get this ball rolling for now.

Flymo the Hovercraft Lawnmower

As the weather improved, and the alternating sun and rain incited a riot of growth on our lawn, D sallied forth onto Craigslist to find us a better contraption for mowing our lawn (our prior incarnation of a lawnmower tended to just push the grass down rather than mow it). We were set on NOT buying a gas-powered mower, if possible (think green!), which limited our options to manual-push-spinning-wheel-of-blades type mowers, and electric ones. Given our success with the prior version, we opted to search electric. And did we ever hit the jackpot.

Not only did we end up with an awesome electric mower, but we ended up with a bright orange electric mower with no wheels for only $40. I know what you’re thinking, “With no wheels of course it was only $40! What good is a lawnmower with no wheels?” Well, my friends, let me introduce you to the FLYMO. Our new little buddy is a bonafide Hovercraft lawnmower. That’s right, it HOVERS over the grass on a CUSHION OF AIR. I swear, using it is more like vacuuming the lawn that mowing it. It’s fabulous. Until we get our own pictures up, you can visit this dude’s flickr site to see a picture of a Flymo that looks just like ours…. http://www.flickr.com/photos/vifferrari/94207463/ or you can check out the whole Flymo concept on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flymo. It’s from Europe, ok? We’re just that much more ahead of the times. And if you want to try it out, admission and a test run will only cost you a bottle of wine, a 6-pack of beer, or just some delightful company.

I’m sure more will follow on this soon. We’re still excited about it.

When Seedlings Take Over your Life

As we were working hard to figure out the best way to cut things down, we were simultaneously working our hardest to grow things up. About a month ago I bought several packets of seed from the store and started planting lettuce, basil, and a few other random things in little peat pots. Those peat pots lived in relative warmth and happiness on our kitchen window, growing and sprouting, and being all cute. I finally decided that it was time to graduate them into real pots, and now I have two long planters of basil and lettuce starts growing their little hearts out on our back slab. As the weather warms I’ll probably have to move them (because it will be far too hot for their delicate sensibilities back there), but for now they get sunshine, water, and the company of a few other plants.

I was especially pleased to discover yesterday that my basils had developed a second row of leaves! We’re onto tier two!

In the garden (read: real dirt in the ground) I’ve started lots of arugula and some peas. Despite a brief problem with the peas looking like they’d been through the slug mower, I think we’re off to a good start. The arugula is sprouting well, and my little rows look so cute and linear. The only garden enemy we’ve encountered so far has been a hungry neighborhood squirrel who, along with burying walnuts in our planter drawers last fall, has made a habit of sniffing past our garden and un-earthing the seeds and/or starts before they get a good jump on life. I had one sunflower plant that had emerged and that I was watching excitedly and expectantly. I had achieved about an inch of height (cooing, and smiling at it), and I went out one morning to check on its progress, and it was gone! Eaten! Dissappeared! Darn Gestapo squirrels! I wouldn’t have made the connection were it not for a Saturday morning at the kitchen window in which I caught Mr. Squirrel at his dirty tricks.

Finally, now that I’ve moved the lettuce and basil starts outdoors, the kitchen window sill is hosting an array of new seedlings. Sunflowers (I decided to try them again… this time starting in a squirrel-proof environment!), cucumbers, string beans, larkspur, and a wild experiment to see if I can get bell peppers to grow in Oregon. Who knows. Bear with me and I’ll keep you updated.

Hurrah for spring! Hurrah for growing! Hurrah for starts!