we are almost going to sign up for a CSA… the only draw-back is that t isn’t the most adventuresome vegetable eater… peas and carrots please, and hold your nose at the kale, turnip greens, and swiss chard.

by Jeremy—Jul 9, 10:48 AM

CSA?

by greg—Jul 9, 10:53 AM

indeed…

they go to a local farmer’s market on saturdays and another on wednesdays

both are right over 4 miles from the house.

by Jeremy—Jul 9, 11:01 AM

Report: The salad is still good, except that I dropped a beet and had to change my pants. The gazpacho would be great, except that I overdid the cayenne.

by greg—Jul 9, 12:09 PM

what did you add to the gazpacho?

by Jeremy—Jul 9, 12:10 PM

Besides cayenne pepper?

by greg—Jul 9, 12:12 PM

yes…

by Jeremy—Jul 9, 12:21 PM

Lessee: olive oil, tomatoes, garlic, bell pepper, lemon & lime juice, basil, tarragon, parsley, cumin, cucumber, a dollop of honey, scallions, onion, salt & pepper.

by greg—Jul 9, 12:29 PM

i’ll hafta try dat… never tried honey

by Jeremy—Jul 9, 12:44 PM

For the record, it’s also a Moosewood recipe.

by greg—Jul 9, 12:54 PM

the honey helps to keep it from being too tart…and if you add too much cayenne (a-HEM), it helps to neutralize that, too…

by kl—Jul 9, 01:12 PM

i can see that, given the amount of acerbic acid this recipe calls for… that said, drink this gazpacho and you won’t suffer from scurvy

by Jeremy—Jul 9, 01:31 PM

Scurvy has been defeated! Hooray!

by greg—Jul 9, 02:51 PM

i’ve just had a wonderful plate of sautéed beet greens (though they should be called beet purples, quite tasty and unlike any other green i’ve tasted)

by Jeremy—Jul 10, 10:08 AM

We kept the beets too long in the refrigerator to eat the greens.

What’s your experience with beets, anyway? I realized when I bought them that my family never fixed them that I remember. Preparing them was completely new to me. They’re such an earthy root; I wonder if beets’ flavors change dramatically with the soil they grow in?

by greg—Jul 10, 10:14 AM

i would imagine they do.

in my family we only ever pickled them… no, not pickled beets from a can, but actually pickled them. but, i never did it. i like pickled beets. or we did what in latin america (and i suppose in the u.s. as well) is called russian salad… hard boiled eggs, boiled potatoes, and boiled beets (we’d add mayo)

i have friends that roast them…

this recipe looks interesting

note, i like the recipes here. from here i got the idea for the beet greens, however, i just did olive oil, salt, and water.

by Jeremy—Jul 10, 10:32 AM

I suspect they’d be very good roasted: you could do a nice early summer roots roast, with new potatoes and carrots, and fresh herbs such as rosemary and oh, thyme perhaps? Coat them in herbs and olive oil, pop ‘em in the oven, and in an hour they’d be great!

by greg—Jul 10, 12:37 PM

The recipe (which is intriguing) recommends boiling the beets skins on. Is there some reason for it? Sunday, I treated them like potatoes and peeled them before boiling (though I didn’t in fact peel the potatoes).

by greg—Jul 10, 12:41 PM

yeah, peeled beets bleed, for one… and in that bleeding they lose a lot of flavor and nutrients.

you should cook them leaving an inch or more of the stems and the root tip on them.

today, i made chicken pot pie with a half whole wheat, half unbleached flour pie crust. we had just enough pie crust left over to make a fresh strawberry turnover.

it was deeelish. and the chicken was twice prayed over… once by the rabbi who koshered it, and once by the cook who roasted it in a lime-tequila marinade… but who forgot to pray over it a third time once it was pot-pied.

tonight we go see harry potter. the wife suggested it… since she normally is in bed by 9:45 my jaw dropped and i said yes.

by Jeremy—Jul 10, 06:53 PM

Even if you did have to slaughter a bird have some anonymous Latino working for an orthodox Jew slaughter a bird to cook it, the pot pie sounds good.

If the theater closest to us weren’t already been sold out, we would’ve gone to see HP tonight; alas, it is. By the time we got to the other theater, we had decided to go tomorrow, which was the original plan anyway.

by greg—Jul 10, 09:13 PM

I’ve been making beets (with stems and greens) sauteed and then mixed with a combination of lemon juice, fresh ginger, and honey. I can pass on the recipe to anyone who’s interested.

by Laura—Jul 10, 09:43 PM

please do!

by Jeremy—Jul 11, 06:00 AM

I second 22!

by greg—Jul 11, 06:09 AM

well, i shan’t buy that brand anymore…

by Jeremy—Jul 11, 06:38 AM

The verb tense in the first sentence of 20b is simple past past perfect, in case anyone wondered.

by greg—Jul 11, 06:38 AM

24: It would depend on the plant that rendered the bird, of course. I do doubt your kosher chicken comes from Postville, IA.

How’s the movie?

by greg—Jul 11, 06:40 AM

Whole Beet Skillet, from Simply in Season by Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert, recipe by Kristin Shank Zehr

4-6 medium beets with fresh greens
1-2 T. lemon juice
1-2 T. ginger (peeled and minced)
1-2 T. honey (optional)

Cut greens off beets, leaving about 1 inch on. Place beets in large saucepan, cover with water, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until beets are tender when pricked with a fork, 15-30 minutes.

While beets are cooking, remove stem from beet greens. Chop stems in 1-inch pieces. Chop greens separate.y.

Drain the cooked beets and rinse with cold water. When beets have cooled enough to handle, slip peels off with fingers. Cut beets in slices.

In a saucepan, sauté stems until 1-2 T. butter until tender. Add greens ans sauté until bright green and just tender. Add sliced beets and heat through.

Combine lemon juice, ginger, and honey and pour over the beet mixture.

I haven’t made too many of the recipes in this book, but I’ll recommend it, and its predecessor, the More-with-Less Cookbook. Both are put out by the Mennonite Central Committee and thus are filled with biblical musings and back-to-the-land pronouncements, which always make me feel as though I am engaged in meet, right, and joyful work.

by Laura—Jul 11, 06:43 AM

it was really good. the graphics in this one were amazingly unobtrusive and great. a lot, however, was cut out—-not that it made for a bad movie, just a strange viewing experience.

by Jeremy—Jul 11, 07:00 AM

Unobtrusive, I like. Fingers crossed our new, local, wankerish theater chain didn’t sell out tonight’s shows a month ago.

(That novel’s plot was so convoluted anyway, there was no way they wouldn’t have to cut it for film.)

by greg—Jul 11, 08:28 AM

the fight scene in the ministry of magic was way, super cool… even if i had imagined that space differently.

the weasley brother’s fireworks were cool.

an inordinate amount of time, but not really because it was fun and prepared for the future encounter with volde, was spent on magical training.

dolores umbrage was an absolute hoot!

a lot of the secondary stuff was cut out. suppose you didn’t know who malfoy was from the previous movies, or who malfoy’s dad was, you wouldn’t really understand plot points in this novel. then again, given the massive scope of the novel and the time limitations of the movie, the movie did a great job relying on audience knowledge of characters to not go too much into rivalries, etc.

by Jeremy—Jul 11, 10:54 AM

We’re on for 7 o’clock!

by greg—Jul 11, 02:22 PM

25 I would have called it future perfect, but what do I know? I only know tenses in Greek and Latin, and I’ve completely forgotten all the sequences of tenses for conditions.

by Laura—Jul 11, 05:14 PM

Future perfect: “will have been sold out.”

In truth, 20’s “weren’t already been sold out” isn’t any tense at all, just an unfortunate case of not editing. The tense in 25 I fabricated as cover. I’m sure some language at one time or another had that as an actual case, but English doesn’t.

by greg—Jul 11, 09:27 PM

By the time you read this comment, I shall already have left for work. Future perfect is my favorite tense, but I admit it’s a stretch to apply to your example.

Then, of course, there’s mood, so in Greek you have a construction called “the optative of unfulfilled desire.”

by Laura—Jul 12, 07:11 AM

I do wish English were a moodier language.

by greg—Jul 12, 08:25 AM