They're Alive! ALIVE

Looks like they're trying to escape, doesn't it? Well, they're beets, and escape is what beets do.

There's nothing more slippery than peeled beets. They've got a positive death wish. You finish peeling the thing in the sink -- leaking red juice everywhere -- and it shoots out of your hands and neatly down the drain. Little bastards.

I expected to live my life without ever peeling a beet. But the fine folks who provide Rhumba and I with a weekly order of organic vegetables decided that we would get to know beets -- better than we ever had before. Because they've been shipping us beets almost every week this summer. The little buggers were beginning to crawl around the kitchen and build nests.

We bought a share at a CSA farm; CSA stands for "community-supported agriculture," which is a big deal around Santa Cruz. You give a local farmer several hundred dollars for a "share" of the produce he grows, and he guarantees you a weekly load of fresh and (usually) organic fruits and vegetables for maybe five months of the year.

And the CSA farmers don't want to bore you, so they plant a veritable United Nations of vegetables. And you never know what you're going to get from week to week.

Strawberries? Sure. Blueberries? Absolutely. And lettuce, and plums, squash and new potatoes and cabbage and basil and dill and salad greens and green beans. Who could argue?

But then comes the stuff you don't know what to do with. The fennel. The kohlrabi, which looks like it came from another planet. And the rainbow chard. Week after week, bunches and piles, no, SNOWDRIFTS of rainbow chard.

I've talked to other CSA shareholders, and nobody's really dealing well with the rainbow chard. Nobody confesses to it, but I think in most households it's going straight to compost. As for kohlrabi: "Did you ever figure out what to do with them?" "No, you?" "Me neither." "I finally sliced one up and ate it raw. Ehh."


And then there were the beets. They kept piling up in the fridge, and they refused to rot -- or at least they resisted pretty damned well. But we're not beet people. Then a few weeks ago the CSA delivered more beets. With potatoes, cabbage, and carrots. "It's a complete borscht kit," Rhumba proclaimed.

Borscht? I can eat borscht. Sour cream makes everything possible. And as it turns out, borscht is dead easy; peel it all up, throw it in a pot, and cook it until everything turns red.

So we've been eating borscht three or four times a week for the past month. We cook up a big pot on Saturday, freeze it, and eat it on those weekday evenings when we don't have the energy to cook dinner, which is most of them. Early on in our relationship, Rhumba told me, "I'm really, really glad you don't mind eating the same thing day after day." I think we were on a black bean kick at the time. And I don't mind, as along as it's good. And there's sour cream.

And since I do tend to eat the same things over and over, maybe it's good that the demonic farmers down at the CSA keep throwing curve balls into our market basket. I've picked up on some good things. I've learned to make pesto out of about every green that comes along (except the dreaded rainbow chard). One week last month when the broccoli was starting to pile up, I even made broccoli pesto. Killer, definitely.

And we've learned to love collards, and bok choy, and lipstick peppers, and even -- I swear -- turnips.

Kohlrabi and fennel and rainbow chard, though -- still working on that.

Bonehead Borscht

Borscht is not rocket science, hence the name. You can put it more or less of any ingredient, and it's still borscht. Just different borscht.

Five potatoes
Four carrots
One small cabbage or half a big one
Eight ounce can of tomato paste or 8-16 ounces of tomato sauce
One 32-ounce carton of vegetarian stock (or meat stock of your choice)
Salt and pepper.

Peel and slice the beets, potatoes, and carrots into relatively small pieces. Slice the cabbage thinly.

Mix the stock and tomato sauce/paste in a big pot; add shredded cabbage. Heat until the cabbage cooks down a little and makes room for everything else. Add everything else. Cook until everything turns red and it doesn't resist a fork. The borscht will be thick, very stew-like; add a little water if you must. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve with (yum) sour cream.

Broccoli Pesto

6 oz broccoli flowers, raw
1 clove garlic 4 oz pecans (or hazelnuts or macadamias)
2 oz Parmesan cheese
1/4 tsp pepper
7 fl.oz olive oil

Grind it all up together however you do those things, smooth or chunky just as you like. We just have a cheap rotary chopper, and we get by. Serve over pasta. Different than your usual pesto, and delicious.

Turnip/Potato Mash

2 pounds of potatoes, cubed
1 1/2 pounds of turnips, cubed or sliced a little smaller than the potatoes
4 cloves of garlic
Four ounces of buttermilk
One tablespoon of butter

Steam the potatoes, turnips, and garlic together until soft, about 25 minutes. Drain, add everything else, and mash. Salt and pepper to taste. The best mashed potatoes I ever had -- probably because they aren't, exactly.