Beet Success **RECIPE ALERT**

I realize my re-experimentation with the Earthbox posts isn't really working. We've had many weeks of boxes for which I have not uploaded photos nor elaborated on how we use them. Part of me feels defeated, and part of me feels non-chalant: truthfully, we haven't done much with our produce except grill, eat in salads, or use as pizza toppings for a causal 4th of July get-together. In the end, they wouldn't have made for good posts. I probably would have lost readers.

However, there may be a few of you-- I'm looking at you, initial 3 or 4 early Loyal Readers-- who may remember my failed experimentation with beets detailed in one of last summer's posts.  For those of you who don't want to interrupt reading this entry to start all over with a different entry, suffice it to say I am not a fan of beets. Other than an amazing dish at Taxim in Chicago- and trust me, I've tried to find the recipe or at least a description-- I've never met a beet that I liked.

So, the more observant of you may have noticed that we've gotten beets in almost all of our boxes and are probably wondering how we've used them. As the BF is a big fan, they've gone with my best blessings to his fridge.

But they've sat there, neglected and unused. As we tend to cook most of our meals together, he hasn't really had a chance to use them on his own. Eventually, once the oldest batch was in danger of needing to be pitched, he proposed a solution that was both quick and shareable: Beet chips.

We've gotten good at making regular chips. I mean, really, who doesn't like potato chips in at least one form or another? With the abundance of potatoes that show up in the farm box, chips are both a non-labor intensive preparation as well as saveable future snack. Not that we've ever actually saved them. They're almost immediately consumed whenever we bake up a batch.

Beet chips are similar in may ways: easy to prepare, easy to store, easy to consume. And the best part of all? I ACTUALLY LIKE THEM.

So there you go! I'm sure the BF would like some variety in his beet preparation, but I'm happy if I only ever ate them in this form forever. And for those of you who are as beet-averse as me, go for the crispier, more carbon-covered ones. Normally I don't like burned chips, but for these, the crispier, the better.

As always, a few other notes before I grace you with the recipe. When it comes to any chips, but especially these, the thinner they are sliced the more solid and crispy they will be when out of the oven. If you have access to a mandolin, as we do, now is an excellent time to use it. Either the narrowest or second narrowest setting will do. If using a knife.... well, be careful.

Also, cooking times are approximate and should be adjusted based on your oven and how thin your slices are. We perfected the technique in my oven at 26 minutes. However, when making a batch in a different oven while on vacation, 26 minutes scorched them. We used a thinner slicer setting, but the oven callibration may have been different, too, and found that 15 minutes was perfect. Moral of the story: keep your eyes on the chips.

Enjoy! And if you are a new reader who likes beets, perhaps you'll like the cold beet soup earlier reviewed in this post. (See how I did that?)

Beet Chips

(serves 2-4, depending on your serving size)

Ingredients:
3 beets, de-stemmed

1 tbs olive oil or olive oil spray

Sea salt

1. Preheat oven to 375. Prick beets with fork and place into glass baking dish with 1 inch of water; cover with foil. Bake for 45-50 minutes, or until easily punctured with a fork. Remove from oven, allow to cool. When cool enough to handle, peel the beets.

2. Turn oven down to 350.

3. Adjust mandolin to the 1.5mm or 3mm setting. Slice beets onto plate or in bowl.

4. Line a baking sheet with foil; brush or drizzle olive oil lightly onto foil. Place as many beet slices as possible onto baking sheet without overlapping. (You may have too many slices to fit on one baking sheet, so you may need to repeat the process again a few times.) One by one, flip each beet slice over so they are coated on both sides with the oil.

5. Lightly shake sea salt on top of beet slices. It is not necessary to flip and salt the other side of the beets.

6. Bake beets for 15-26 minutes, depending on your oven setting. When chips begin to brown and curl up, they are ready. It is okay if some beets are not quite super crispy when you pull them out, as they will continue to bake a few minutes more out of the oven.

7. Enjoy!

A quick note- do not leave un-eaten beets out in the open for too long, especially in humid weather. They absorb water quite quickly and will turn limp and mushy. Store all uneaten beets in an airproof container for later.

Beaten by Beets **RECIPE ALERT**

I'm a week or so behind on sharing my CSA with you:

Red pepper; cucumber; beets; carrots; Sungold tomatoes; blueberries

As you can see, this week's box was a little thin. No worries: the risk of joining a CSA is that there may be weeks where you don't get loaded up with the goods, and apparently week 4 was one of those. Nevertheless, I was thrilled to find that my brother & sis 'n law weren't going to be the only ones to enjoy blueberries, as well as intrigued by all the possibilities the Sungold tomatoes could yield in terms of recipes. In the end, they were so sweet and juicy I ended up just eating them as my afternoon snacks at work. I've never eaten tomatoes as a snack before, so you can imagine how amazing they were.

One item I was a little wary of seeing yet again were the beets. For those of you keeping score, I had also received beets in the last box so now I was two bunches in. I am generally not a fan of beets except for an amazing beet dish I had at Taxim, a restaurant I visited in an earlier post. Either Taxim's chef did something really well or my taste buds were changing.  In any case, the beets from my CSA were waiting patiently for me to use them and the first bunch was getting a little old. Without the Taxim recipe available to me, I needed to be creative.

I searched online and found a recipe for Roasted Beets with Oranges that incorporated mostly ingredients I already had in-house, such as my lovely homemade red wine vinegar, and logged glowing reviews that included multiple variations on "I hate beets but I loved this recipe!" I took that to be a good sign. I promptly invited my boyfriend over, ran to the store to grab the appropriate missing items, and got ready for a culinary adventure.

That is, however, until I read the recipe more carefully. To be clear, I generally peruse recipes thoroughly before committing to them, but for some reason in this case I managed to skip over the section that said I needed to roast the beets for an hour and a half first, and then after assembling the final dish I had to let it marinate for another hour. The two of us are absolute pros at eating dinner at ridiculously late hours-- sometimes it's almost breakfast, it seems-- so suddenly this dish seemed an impossible task.

What to do? It was after 7pm, I hadn't started to cook yet, and the options were looking bleak. I just didn't have a go-to recipe in my repertoire like I do for the vegetables I actually enjoy on a regular basis. At that moment, my eyes wandered to my cookbook shelf and I slapped my forehead.

Towards the beginning of the Au Naturale journey, but before the winter frost had begun to thaw, I swung by a shuttering Borders bookstore and ravaged what was left of the cookbook section. One of the two books I treated myself to was in anticipation of signing up for my first CSA: it's called Eating Local, published by Sur la Table. It's designed for the farm box subscriber in mind, and instead of being organized by dish or meal it's organized by main ingredient. So when you get a mess of, oh, say, beets, and need to know 4 different ways to use them up, you can just turn to the beet section. Even more fun, it features profiles of small, independent farms from all over the country, the kind of farms I choose to support and encourage all of you to support, too.  After buying that book I spent many a lazy night curled up on the couch, eagerly reading it from start to finish.

I grabbed the book off the shelf and to the beet section I went! While looking for a recipe that did not necessitate another run to the store, I found a recipe for Golden Beet and Buttermilk Soup, which was surely a sign: what an excellent way to use up the rest of the buttermilk leftover from the strawberry basil muffins! The only other changes were substituting green onion for chives (as I didn't have any); adding an extra clove of garlic (because we love garlic); and our beets were red instead of golden. If you happen to have the option of using golden beets I strongly recommend it. Using the red, the resulting dish was not physically unlike the bright pink of borscht:

Reactions-- and how I used the remaining beets-- after the recipe. Yep, I'm going to make you work for it:

Beet and Buttermilk Soup:

Ingredients:
1 pound beets, golden or red (weight without greens, about 3 medium beets)
1 large clove garlic, sliced
3 cups buttermilk (I used low-fat)
1/4 cup chopped fresh chives, or 2 tbs chopped fresh dill, plus more finely chopped for garnish
1 TBS sherry vinegar or white wine vinegar, or more to taste
kosher or sea salt


Directions:
1) Preheat the oven to 375. If the beet greens are attached, remove all but 1/2 inch of the stem. Reserve the greens and stems for another use. Put the beets in a baking dish, and add water to a depth of 1/4 inch. Cover tightly with a lid or foil and bake until a knife pierces them easily, 45 to 55 minutes. When cool enough to handle, peel the beets.


2) Cut the beets into quarters. Put the beets, garlic, and 1 1/2 cups of the buttermilk in a blender and puree until smooth. (You can use a food processor but the results will not be as smooth.) Add the remaining 1 1/2 cups buttermilk, the dill, and the vinegar and puree again. Season to taste with salt. Transfer to a covered container and chill well.


3) Taste before serving and adjust the seasoning. Serve in cups or bowls, garnishing each portion with a sprinkle of the chives.


So-- my thoughts?  Meh. Although I do appreciate that beets are quite easy to peel. I was expecting to wrestle with them like one often wrestles with peeling inconveniently shaped foods. I know what you're thinking now: "Really?? 'Meh?' Then why did you even bother to post the recipe?" Right?  I decided to post because my fantastic and honest boyfriend, who is ambivalent about beets and generally dislikes cold soups (there goes my gazpacho plans), thought this was really quite tasty. So for all you beet lovers out there, this soup is probably right up your alley.

Alas, though, yesterday I found myself in a quandary with the remaining beets that were beginning to get a bit long in the tooth. I decided to go for the original beet and orange salad- I had the ingredients, I needed to redeem myself from the chocolate cupcake I snagged off the Evil Bar of Doom, and I kind of didn't care that I might not eat dinner until 10pm... which ended up being the case. In addition to the fact that I am a slow cook-- so when a recipe says it will only take a half hour, I know that I'm in for a full hour-- I hadn't had a night home all week and the long time in between steps allowed me to get some things done, such as finally unpack from last weekend's trip (more on that in the next posts).

I would rate this one as refreshing and summery, and not too bad. And it's very colorful. I liked it better than the soup.  But still kind of a "meh".  I otherwise wouldn't post this recipe with a "meh" rating, but hey, this is going to be my first and last post dedicated to beets. After just two beet-centric cooking adventures, I'm pretty sure I'm done with them for good.

Roasted Beet Salad with Oranges and Beet Greens
(thanks to Epicurious for this one)

• Ingredients:
• 6 medium beets with beet greens attached

• 2 large oranges
• 1 small sweet onion, cut through root end into thin wedges
• 1/3 cup red wine vinegar
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon grated orange peel

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400°F. Trim greens from beets. Cut off and discard stems. Coarsely chop leaves and reserve. Wrap each beet in foil. Place beets directly on oven rack and roast until tender when pierced with fork, about 1 hour 30 minutes. Cool. Peel beets, then cut each into 8 wedges. Place beets in medium bowl.

Cook beet greens in large saucepan of salted boiling water just until tender, about 2 minutes. Drain. Cool. Squeeze greens to remove excess moisture. Add greens to bowl with beets. Cut peel and white pith from oranges. Working over another bowl and using small sharp knife, cut between membranes to release segments (or just carefully pull them apart with your fingers. Add orange segments and onion to bowl with beet mixture. Whisk vinegar, oil, garlic, and orange peel in small bowl to blend; add to beet mixture and toss to coat. Season with salt and pepper. Let stand at room temperature 1 hour. Serve.

Happy Weekend, Everyone!

Or, I guess I should have titled it "I had a happy weekend, everyone!"  Because spring is in the air and summer is getting just thiiis much closer, and all this weekend I found myself surrounded by Au Naturale goodness wherever I went.

Number one?  The Evanston (suburb of Chicago) summer Farmer's Market began this Saturday! I got up early (for me) in order to hit it up.  There's not a huge amount of selection and all the farmer's weren't there yet, but it's a start.  Seasonality filled the air.  I had my pick of a variety of asparagus, spinach, green onion, plants, and more.  Most excitedly, the hand-rolled butter from last summer was available again- I snapped that one up quick.  About 30 minutes and a full bag later, I had 2 bunches of just-picked asparagus, 2 bags of organic spinach, eggs, butter, mozarella, and mushrooms.  Hmm, what shall I cook tonight?

Later in the day I was running errands when I passed a new local and organic small grocery store in my neighborhood.  I quickly commandeered a parking spot and ran in for a look.  It seems that Real Naked Food Chicago just opened, as many of their shelves were moderately empty, but I'm happy to welcome them to the 'hood and wish them tons of success.  Both a grocery store specializing in local and unprocessed goods as well as a deli and juice bar, they join the ranks of Green Grocer Chicago and Dill Pickle Food Co-op in the local and organic grocery store concept.  They are also the first of their kind to be within walking distance, so if I ever need a last-minute staple it's good to know they're there.

After all my running around, I came home to enjoy the Spring edition of Edible Chicago that landed in my mailbox this week.  Remember Edible Chicago from an earlier blog post, oh loyal 3 or 4 readers?  I didn't yet finish it, but I'm excited to see what's happening in the local Au Naturale universe and find the articles and recipes to be incredibly motivating.  I hope you have subscribed to and are supporting your local Edible Community magazine, too.

I finished up the day by having dinner with a good friend who is in town for a bit.  One of my loyal 3 or 4 readers, she brilliantly recommended Taxim, a new-ish Greek restaurant in town that uses seasonal ingredients from local farms such as Nichols Farm, Iron Creek, Mint Creek and more.  They also make all of their marinades, breads, charcuterie, yogurt, and more in-house.  The meal was spectacular (except the fried zuccinni- you can skip that one).  If you are a local Chicagoan I highly recommend you check this place out.

I truly look forward to seeing what else will pop up in the next few weeks.  Loyal readers: what have you seen in your cities, neighborhoods, regions, etc. that tells you the best of the growing season is upon us?  What have you taken advantage of? What are you most looking forward to?