roasting and sautéing enough veggies for a week

Come along with me.

I am going on a little bit of an eating journey this week.

I have been reading The Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler. It's an amazing book. As I read, and thought, and made my plans for my vegetables this week, my mouth was literally watering. Let's hope things turn out in reality the way they are in my mind. I am only part way through it, but I had to stop right there in the middle of chapter three and do what she told me to do.

If you love food, and cooking food, and eating food, this book is amazing. I am not going to say it is light reading or a page turner by any means. It is also not a cookbook that you can leaf through during spare minutes or while making your shopping list.

But, it you like to enjoy great writing and amazing descriptions of food and its preparation, this book is fabulous.

Her entire premise is that we ought to stop burying ourselves in recipes. We can stop having to go through a process of researching, reading, shopping, and prepping every time we want to put dinner on the table. Although the book is all about how to cook food and enjoy amazing meals, there are actually very few recipes, and very very few measurements. Rather, she describes what type of ingredients to use, and what ways they can be prepared. By letting each thing you cook build on the last thing you cooked, you don't ever have to find yourself standing in the kitchen at 5:00, wondering what the heck is for dinner. Tonight's dinner can most likely be built upon last night's dinner, and is therefore mostly decided upon and already partially done.

At any rate, in chapter three, she describes her process for shopping for a bunch of vegetables, roasting and sautéing them all on one day, and then having prepared ingredients for a week's worth of meals. According to Tamar Adler, they will be as easy and versatile to use as a can of beans, once the initial cooking is completed.

Most importantly, though, the ways she describes the meals she makes out of the vegetables... soups, salads, risotto, curries, pestos, and sandwiches, made me wish I were sitting at her kitchen table. Right. Now.

Well, since I have a beautiful box of vegetables sitting here that I picked up from Abundant Harvest Organics, I decided to give it a go.

I followed her instructions to roast the hefty veggies and sauté the greens on the first day.

Tamar Adler lists many many different veggies to roast, and I chose to use everything in my box that seemed like a "cookable" vegetable (All that was left, besides fruit, was cilantro, napa cabbage, a salad green called mache, and arugula).

I had broccoli, potatoes, cauliflower, beets, brussels sprouts, turnips, and carrots to roast. I also sautéed chard, green garlic, and the greens from the beets.

I thought I was doing well with making candy out of orange peels and stock out of onion skins, but according to Tamar I am not making the most of my vegetables! She suggests saving the core and leaves of the cauliflower, the tough stems of the broccoli, the core of a cabbage or the stems of chard. These can be made into a pesto, and I will give you that recipe when I try it later this week. For now, I have dutifully set them aside and I'm saving them for their ultimate fate.

I began with this amazing pile of gorgeous, fresh vegetables:

I chopped and roasted two pans that held broccoli, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts, with some whole cloves of garlic.

I also chopped and roasted two pans with the root vegetables: carrots, potatoes, and turnips.

Finally, I roasted a pan of beets. These need to be tented and cooked with a bit of water so they steam all the way through while they roast.

Preheat the oven to 450. Scrub, peel, and chop all the vegetables except the beets.

Spread each set of vegetables out on a baking sheet. The sheet can be pretty full, but they need to be in a single layer, with a bit of space between them. Toss them with some olive oil, until they are coated, and sprinkle with salt. Pop them in the oven, and after a half an hour, start checking them to see if they are done enough to make you want to keep eating. Be sure and tuck a few whole cloves (unpeeled) of garlic onto each baking sheet. Apparently we will use this later this week.

This is romanesco cauliflower. More on that to come! It's wild!

The beets are a bit different. Cut the greens and stems off and place them in a sink full of water, to use later with the other greens. Tuck the beets, tails intact, into a baking pan, and wash them with hard running water. Tip the pan while you wash them, and allow the water to run out. Once the waste water is clear, the beets are clean enough to cook. (Removing the skins after roasting them also removes any little bits of dirt that are left). Leave a little bit of the water in the pan, drizzle with olive oil, and and cover the pan tightly with foil. Place this in the oven.

Now that all of your veggies are cooking, you may want to check them once in a while. If they are getting too brown but not soft enough, scoot them all together to build up steam. If they are getting soft but not browned, spread them out.

The majority of the veggies should be done in half an hour to 45 minutes. She explains that they need to roast until they are "completely, completely tender." Rather than giving a specified time to let them cook, she says to check after a half an hour, "Test the doneness of...vegetables by tasting them. When you don't wonder, but reach to eat another, they're done."

And boy oh boy was she right about that. I couldn't stop myself from reaching again and again to munch on the first pan of veggies to come out of the oven while I continued prepping and cooking other things.

The beets, though, are going to need a bit longer, and won't necessarily all be done at the same time. Check the beets by lifting the foil, and trying to pierce each one with a knife. If it goes in easily, pull the beet out of the oven. If not, let it keep cooking. Tamar says "If you're not sure if they're done, they're not." Be sure to re-cover the pan tightly after checking and removing any beets, so they can continue to steam. After they are done and cooled, remove the skin by rubbing it off with your fingers. Cut them into slices or wedges and then sprinkle them with red wine vinegar and salt.

Once a pan of veggies finished and there is a little space in the oven, Tamar recommends placing a pan of nuts in. Let the walnuts or pecans cook for about 10 minutes, and they will come out toasted and perfect for topping a salad.

After all of the roasting vegetables are in the oven (and some may be back out again by this point!), it's time to take care of the greens. Add any greens you have to the beet greens that are soaking in the sink. In my case it was green garlic and chard leaves (I cut the chard stems off and added them to my collection of cauliflower leaves and core and broccoli stems that I am saving for later). Swish them all around in the sink to get them clean, and then pull them out, chop them roughly, and sauté them in a little olive oil and a tiny bit of salt. Keep most of the water that clings to them after washing... they are supposed to steam more than they sauté. If they dry out while they cook, add a tablespoon of water every once in a while. Cook them in as many batches as you need to. I did two frying pans full. Tamar recommends adding chopped garlic in with the greens, but since I had green garlic I didn't want to overdo it. These are done when they are completely wilted and can be easily cut with a knife.

After I spent a couple of hours in the kitchen, I had changed that beautiful pile of veggies into these containers of prepared ingredients:

Come back tomorrow and I'll share the first meal I made out of them! It couldn't have been simpler, and it was one of the most delicious meals I have eaten in a long long time.

happy birthday to a happy happy guy.

My youngest son turned six today. I can hardly believe that I am writing that.


When I had babies (I think... yesterday?), I would look at those people who had kids, (you know kids, those age 5-12 people) and think What do you do with them? They're ungainly, their teeth are too big and they are skinny and smelly and they talk too much.


Now my babies are all of a sudden kids. They do have big teeth in their little faces, and they do smell sometimes. I can admit that once in a while I wish they would just shut up for a minute. But, they are so wonderful. They are intelligent and they keep me on my toes with their questions and their observations. They are funny and warm and helpful to each other. They are learning at amazing speeds and trying new things out all the time.


The baby of the family is Andrew. He is funny and witty and charming. He is a people-person to the extreme. He can quickly gauge a person, find out what he or she would like to see and/or hear from him, and deliver it. I don't mean to make him sound like Eddie Haskell, because he's not. He doesn't want to simply make you like him, he just wants to make you happy. As a two-year-old, I actually called him reasonable. I don't know many reasonable two-year-olds. He also definitely realizes that life is much simpler and more pleasant when everyone is happy. He rarely fails to do what he is asked, and he often doesn't have to be asked, before doing chores or being helpful. He gets himself up and ready for school, completely independently, every morning. He notices when I have folded laundry, and puts it away on his own volition. He holds the door when my hands are full, says please and thank you, and willingly shares his toys and snacks. He cleans his room, does homework, and practices piano, without my having to nag him.


Of course, there is a flip side to this, too. Because he can read others so well, he knows just how to push their buttons; a skill he uses readily with his older brother and sister. He can needle them and drive them to violence like nobody's business. 


He is physically coordinated, and although he may never be a star athlete, I feel confident he won't embarrass himself, either. He's comfortable with a ball in his hand, he is ready to take on any challenger at dodgeball or tetherball, and he holds his own on his baseball team.


He loves to be the center of attention, and he is pretty skilled at doing so without being (too) obnoxious. He will put on antics and try ever-more daring feats, if he knows he has an audience. He can tell a whopper like no other, as well. All through preschool, his teachers would have to ask me to clarify if his stories were true or not. Some, like the skiing mountain in his backyard, and the twin brother named Jeffrey, are clearly just tall tales. Others, though, can be pretty believable (like the swing set he and his dad are supposedly building in the garage, and the reptile show that allegedly came to school and let him hold a snake). As a matter of fact, I guess I was checking with his teachers to find out what was true as often as they were checking with me. There were two weeks where he came home every day to tell me about a new student. Daily he told me what he and Jacob had been doing together. I was happy to hear the had such a great new friend for a quite a while... until the teacher informed me that there was indeed no new student.


He strives to be cool, and to act older than his age. He won't kiss me goodbye in front of his friends, or hold my hand on the way to to school. He loves surfers and skaters, won't wear anything with stripes (too babyish) or a collar (too nerdy). He is up-to-date on current music and movies, and won't cry in front of anyone. 


He is in kindergarten now, and although he is reluctant to learn to read, he is growing in leaps and bounds in every other arena. It is amazing to witness. He is engrossed in math, loves the songs they sing in the classroom (although he is too cool to actually sing them while he is at school), and believes wholeheartedly that "Zero the Hero" comes to his classroom every 10 days to leave treats for the kids.


I count myself lucky indeed to be able to spend this kid's childhood with him. He makes my life so very much more fun, day in and day out.


And fairly often, at night, he really is still my baby, when he falls asleep on my shoulder.

We are having some friends from school over next week to celebrate his birthday. Today, though, was meant to be special in every way for him.


He got to choose breakfast (donuts), lunch (McDonalds ... yuk), and dinner (Islands). I notice he didn't give me any opportunity to try and get some veggies on a plate for him. Don't you worry, though... I fooled him (and I'll get to that later).


My husband took the kids for a tour of a local farm preservation/museum this morning, and this afternoon we went to a local candy shop. He had proclaimed that he wanted "a big, swirly lollipop" instead of a birthday cake.

However, you can't put birthday candles in a lollipop. 


So, of course I went ahead and made him a cake.... 

I made a chocolate cake with a peanut butter filling. I am not a cake decorator, by any means, so I left it unfrosted, with a layer of chocolate chips baked into the top. It was a bit too crumbly for me to try to frost it and have it come out looking decent at all, so I didn't attempt it (and risk a total failure).

But here is the biggest secret of the whole day... and if you ever tell any of my family members, I will never ever speak to you again.

Chocolate Beet Cake

Oh, yes, I did. Stop looking at me like that. He didn't even want a cake in the first place, remember? And he doesn't know I fed him beets.


I got this recipe from the Abundant Harvest Organics newsletter (tell me it wasn't providence that a chocolate cake recipe came the week of Andrew's birthday), and I didn't alter much. The only changes I made were to make it in two round layers (9-inch pans) and to add a layer of peanut butter cream in between (I thought this would help in case it tasted too beet-ish, but it didn't).

Unless you knew there were beets in the cake, I don't think you would notice anything was different. Certainly my family didn't. There is the tiniest earthy edge to it, but the chocolate is so rich that you really aren't thinking about anything but chocolate while you eat. 


Here is the recipe from Abundant Harvest:

• 1 ¾ cup flour
• 1 ½ tsp baking soda
• ¼ tsp salt
• 3-5 steamed beets, quartered, save liquid
• 1 ¼ cup sugar
• 1 cup oil
• ½ cup juice from beet cooking
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 4 squares unsweetened chocolate, melted
• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 9 x 13 baking pan. In a bowl mix flour, baking soda and salt together. In food processor puree cooked beets that have been drained, should be about 2 cups. To the beets add sugar, oil, ½ cup of beet juice and beat on medium speed until well combined. Add eggs and extract. Add the flour mixture to beet mixture and mix until well combined. Add melted unsweetened chocolate. Pour mixture into baking pan and sprinkle chocolate chips evenly over top of batter. Bake for 30-35 minutes. Let cool. May be sprinkled with powdered sugar if desired.

And here is the recipe I used for the peanut butter layer:

Cream together 1/2 cup peanut butter, 1/2 cup butter, and 1/2 cup powdered sugar. Spread on bottom layer before placing top layer on the cake.

the beet. is neat. and sweet. such a treat.

I don't know if you remember, but last time I got beets in my box, I avoided them like the plague. They sat in my fridge and called out to me every time I opened the door, until I finally made a beet salad.

Having gotten over my fear of beets, I went ahead and confronted the beets yesterday... only two days after the four of them came home to roost. And boy am I happy I did! Not only did I cook them, I ate them all up... single-handedly.  Sorry to those other people who live with me. I didn't share.

The beet is really not such a beautiful vegetable on the outside.

It does have a beautiful ruby red inside, though, as my fingers can testify.

Last time I cooked beets, I felt bad about all the vitamins that got thrown out with the bathwater...

So this time I went for a recipe that didn't involve boiling these guys. As a matter of fact, I didn't even peel them, so they didn't lose any nutrients that way, either. And all you add to the beets is salt, so there isn't any added calories or fats, either. Win-win-win!

I present to you.... Beet chips!

First, slice the beets as thinly as you can. If you have a mandolin, use it. I don't, so I went ahead and did the best I could with a knife. Lay the slices out on a baking sheet, on top of a sheet of parchment paper. With parchment paper, you don't even need add oil. Shake a little salt onto each beet slice, and pop them in an oven that has been heated to 325 degrees.

These take a little longer to cook than other veggie chips. Start checking them after about half an hour.

You will know when they are done when they turn a lighter pink color.

Not done beet chip                            done beet chip 

Take out any chips that have turned pink, and let the rest keep cooking. Lay the done chips on a cutting board so they can cool and crisp up. As for the rest, check them every five minutes or so. After they turn pink, they can burn and turn back to a darker color, so you want to make sure you get them out while they are pink. Keep pulling out the done chips when you check, and let the rest cook. The thinner they are, the faster they will cook, of course, and the less likely they are going to turn tough and stale over time.

It was all I could do to wait long enough to take a picture of these before I ate them. I was eating them as they came out of the oven in little batches!  They are great by themselves, or dipped (I had some leftover yogurt-dill dip), and if I had any left, I would crumble them on top of a salad. I can always hope for more beets next week!

While I was at it, I used the green leaves to make some green chips. Here is how you do it, if you are interested. They are also a delicious and nutritious snack.

Beeting around the bush

I like to think that I stay on top of the things that need to be done. I don't let dirty laundry pile up beyond a load or two, I have permission slips filled out and returned the day after they come home (so I don't lose them), and I empty the dishwasher as soon as it finishes. However, I have to admit to myself that I procrastinate on some things, as well. I often renew my library books online again and again so I won't have to make a trip to the library to return them. I'm great about reading and returning emails, but calling to make an appointment? I can find about a million other things to do first.

I am learning that I also procrastinate with certain veggies.

Take beets.

I got them in my box two weeks ago. I used up everything else in that box (even the beet greens!). Then I got the next box, and used up just about everything in that box too. When my crisper drawer was left with a couple of carrots, couple of potatoes, and a bunch of beets nearing their 2 week birthday, I had to act. It was time.

I have only cooked beets a couple of times. While I don't dislike them, I am not really sure that I like them. They are a little bit sweet. A little bit earthy. A little bit ...

I just don't know what they are. I think that's the problem. I am not really sure they have a flavor. They just don't add much to a meal.

So anyway, being as I haven't cooked them often, I didn't have a great idea of what I wanted to do.

I ended up, as usual, googling a recipe, changing it to fit what I have in the house, and voila!

This orange and beet salad was fantastic! I can't say the beets were super flavorful or that I am dying to eat more tomorrow, but they balanced very nicely with the oranges and onions. I was very happy to eat this salad. Without delay.

I love to have recipes that allow me to do a lot of the work ahead of time, so that at dinner time, I can finish everything more quickly. We have a busy schedule, and this worked perfectly... I could boiled the beets, and let them cool while I went to karate class with my son. Then I peeled and sliced them, and let them marinate while I took the bigger kids to piano lessons and went for a bike ride with the little one. All I had left to do right before dinner was assemble the plates. 

Orange Beet Salad

4 or 5 medium-sized beets

4 cups spinach

2 navel oranges

1/2 red onion

dressing:

1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 cup white whine vinegar

1/4 tsp. dried mustard

salt and pepper, to taste

Scrub the beets, and pace them in a pot, with enough cold water to cover. Bring them to a boil, and simmer for thirty minutes, until you can pierce them with a fork. Let this cool down. 

Meanwhile, mix the dressing ingredients in a small bowl.

When the beets have cooled, peel and slice them into 1/4 inch slices. If you have time, marinate them in about half of the dressing for up to a couple of hours.

On four or five plates, lay out a bed of washed spinach leaves. Layer orange slices, beets, and red onion. Drizzle dressing over each plate, and serve.

So what is this stuff?

This is the water that was left from boiling the beets. All that beautiful red color means that it is chock full of vitamins and nutrients. You should save it and use it as a base for soup or a sauce. I wish I could say I did. I watered the garden with it. We'll get our vitamins back eventually, in the next veggie.