beet soup

Back a million weeks ago, when my parents sent me home with fresh produce from their garden, the bounty included a bag full of small-ish beets.

Now the great thing about beets is, they’re tailor-made for long storage. Hence when I decided to make some beet soup this afternoon, the beets were still good to go.

Beet soup is sometimes called borsht. I think it may include potatoes in that incarnation. The soup below is just plain beets and onions. Feel free to jazz it up if you like.

several beets (don’t know how many I used; let’s say 12-15 small)
1 large Spanish onion, chopped
olive oil
salt to taste

Consider yourself duly forewarned: beets are MESSY. The easiest way to cook them is whole, with their tough outer skins on. Just put the washed (but unpeeled!) beets in a pot, and cover them with water.

They’ll take a long time to cook, though. Like, probably more than an hour. They’re done when you can pierce them with a fork.

Peeling them is the cool part. Put the pot full of cooked beets in the sink, and run cold water into the pot until the beets are just warm to the touch. Then, one beet at a time, gently squeeze the skins off. (Don’t wear white.) My mom always left the skins in the pot – that way you’re not flapping your hands like a maniac, trying to brush off the wet skins.

Once you’ve peeled all the cooked beets, chop them coarsely and set them aside.

In your large pot, heat the olive oil and add the chopped onion. Sautee until soft. Add the cooked beets, fill the pot with just enough water to cover everything, and simmer for about 20 minutes.

Now comes the REALLY messy part. Puree the soup in a blender or food processor. (Really don’t wear white.)

How do you puree soup, by the way? For safety’s sake, you should probably wait until the soup is cool. Me, I like to live dangerously – I always puree it hot. (Kids, this requires adult supervision!)

Transfer the pieces of vegetables into the blender jar with a ladle. Make sure there’s enough cooking liquid to cover all the pieces, or the machine may blades may get stuck and stall. Think of it as giving the vegetable pieces enough room to float – but just a little bit!

Transfer the pureed soup to a waiting container – preferably a large bowl. (I’m house-sitting right now. Could only find a couple of medium-sized bowls in this kitchen. I’m thinking the homeowner doesn’t cook much…)

Once all the soup is pureed, I usually put it all back in the pot, and add salt to taste. How much salt? Well, it depends how salty you like your soup. Try adding about a tablespoonful, and stir the soup well before tasting. If it doesn’t seem salty enough, and another tablespoonful… and so on.

I measure stuff with my hands most of the time, and I usually like to add a couple of palm-dents of salt to a large pot of soup.

My biggest regret of the afternoon: I forgot to bring my handy canning funnel from home. I usually put the pureed soup into canning jars and freeze them to re-heat later; it’s SO much messier without a canning funnel.

A lot of people don't really like beets. I think they're yummy. Naturally sweet, and such an amazing colour. Plus, what other food turns your pee pink?

the light of the moon

I'm ashamed to admit how little time I spend outside during the course of my "normal" day-to-day life. I walk from my apartment to my car, and from my car to other buildings. Occasionally I actually go for walks on city streets. But generally I spend very little time outdoors, and even less time in a natural setting.

I'm house-sitting right now, looking after two large dogs. They need to be let out several times a day, and walked at least twice. The property is quite large, and one circumnavigation of the park-like grounds is a frequent choice for the daily walks.

I am loving being outside with the dogs in this crisp, autumn weather.

This morning I took them out early, since I also had to put out the recycling for the garbage trucks before 7:00 a.m. It was still dark, but I've done the walk around the grounds with the dogs often enough to feel comfortable on the unlit terrain.

And I hadn't counted on the moon.

When you live in a city with streetlights, it's easy to forget how bright the moon is. I remember reading books as a child, with stories about people travelling "by the light of the moon," and I could never figure out how the moon could give light.

Then I spent a summer planting trees in northern Ontario, where there are NO lights for miles; during a midnight pee I found myself blearily wondering where the spotlight had come from - and then realized it was the moon, high above me!

It was magical walking by the light of the moon this morning with the dogs. They had shadows! That made me laugh - to think the moon is bright enough to cast shadows.

(And it's only a quarter moon right now; it will be a lot brighter in a week's time...)

how i'm staying cold-free (knock on wood)

Everyone I talk to these days is sick. And I don't just mean everyone in my city. I mean everyone everywhere - Toronto, London, ON, England, Europe...

Here's Michelle's sure-fire preventive for avoiding colds: raw garlic.

I mentioned this garnish in the comment to my harvest soup recipe posted earlier this week. I've been eating it like crazy for days, stirred into soups and stews.

1 small tub (500 mL) of light sour cream
8 cloves fresh, minced garlic

I actually used two cloves from a head of elephant garlic, but it works out to about the same amount. Stir the minced garlic into the sour cream and let the flavours meld for an hour or two before serving. Should keep for up to a week in the refrigerator.

(I find that if I eat raw garlic in the evening, it doesn't come out through my skin the next day the way cooked garlic dishes do. It's pretty powerful stuff during and after eating, though. Just saying.)

jack-o'-lantern time

It's Saturday morning and I'm up to my elbows in pumpkin muck. Loving every minute of it. I'd been wanting to buy a pumpkin for several days, but kept putting it off. Then I asked my niece last night on the phone what she'd done this week that was fun, and she replied that they took a trip to the pumpkin patch.

That settled it.

Bought my pumpkin this morning. (City-slicker Aunt Michelle doesn't live anywhere near a pumpkin patch, so the selection at Dominion had to do.)

I want a jack-o'-lantern of my own because they're so cheery when it gets dark. The smell alone as I cut into the rind was worth the price of admission. This is fall - happy fall. (As opposed to chilly, rainy, dreary fall.)

I like my jack-o'-lanterns happy, too. No scary faces for me. It's always a bit of a surprise what the visage will look like, though - I prefer to cut freehand. My faces are pretty simple: two triangle eyes, a triangle nose, and a huge grin with a couple of lone teeth. (Why is it that jack-o'-lanterns have to be toothless, by the way?)

I was afraid this year's fellow was going to turn out a bit of a simpleton. Usually I try to go for a jolly laughing face with some intelligence if I can manage it. Luckily the overall effect of this year's effort was redeemed by an unmistakable aura of innocence. My pumpkin looks just like a picture of my laughing nephew, age two.

(Pepitas are sauteeing on the stovetop as I finish writing this. More happy fall memories...)

a moment

I may have already mentioned that I'm a little addicted to YouTube. It's a boon to a woman without a television - and I don't even mind watching that tiny little five-inch screen. I've seen some of the most amazing, moving, funny, gross and entertaining things on YouTube, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Tonight I was browsing through a bunch of random searches - mostly singers I like. After a search of Sting interviews I happened upon a music video of a Sheryl Crow song which featured an appearance by Sting.

I watched, and was deeply touched by the lyrics of this song - Always on Your Side.

It's funny - those private, intimate moments that happen between two people, that you assume are unique to you, and then discover much later are universal...

I once told a former boyfriend of mine that he was like a beautiful butterfly on my hand; I knew if I tried to hold on to him I would hurt him, and so I promised to leave my hand open, and just enjoy the blessing of his presence for as long as it lasted.

Turns out it didn't last nearly as long as I would have liked...

There's a lyric in Always on Your Side that goes:

Well they say that love is in the air; Never is it clear
How to pull it close and make it stay.
Butterflies are free to fly, why do they fly away,
Leavin' me to carry on and wonder why?
Was it you that kept me wandering through this life
When you know that I was always on your side?

~

It really is a lovely song. Check out the video for yourself, here.

(I'm still trying to figure out how they knew about my butterfly story.)

(And now I'm missing that boy...)

harvest soup

I'm having my friend Tricia over for dinner tonight, and have decided to serve soup since it's easy and fairly quick. I have some jars of my basic squash soup in the freezer, so I'll use that as a base. But while I was preparing some stuff to add to it, I decided to take the soup in a whole new direction...

Heat up three portions of:

1 recipe basic squash soup

Then, in a SEPARATE pot, prepare the following SECOND soup:

1/2 large (garden large, not grocery store large) zucchini
3 carrots
1/2 cup green or brown lentils
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon curry powder
pinch rosemary
Herbamare original seasoning, to taste

I had some carrots and a zucchini from my parents' garden in my fridge. I chopped them both individually in my food processor until they were in tiny pieces. (The carrots were dry pieces the size of peppercorns; the zucchini was mush, basically).

Put the chopped carrots, zucchini and lentils in a pot with enough water to cover and make a good soup consistency. Add the seasonings and simmer until the lentils and carrots are cooked. Adjust the saltiness with some more Herbamare* to taste, if needed.

What you will end up with is TWO soups: the squash soup and the lentil soup. I haven't tried this yet (I'll let you know how it goes tonight), but I'm going to pour each soup into the soup bowls from opposite sides at the same time, so that each bowl is filled half with squash and half with lentil soup.

Should make a festive-looking presentation if it works...

*Herbamare is an absolutely fantastic organic vegetable and sea salt seasoning. It can instantly add depth to the flavour of any dish. Look for it in the organic seasonings section of your grocery store or natural foods store.

someone with more blogs than i!

I'm doing research right now for a talk I'm giving next Monday for the Toronto Chapter of Professional Organizers in Canada. I'll be discussing inexpensive marketing techniques, including blogging.

I was just browsing for blogs on that topic when I came across a blogger.com user who has 43 (yes, that's forty-three!) blogs registered under his name. You can check out his profile and his list of blogs here:

http://www.blogger.com/profile/07219299130867293674

Now, what really bugs me about this guy is that he's obviously just used these blogs as a marketing ploy to generate web traffic. He has created as many blog titles as he could think of that relate to his business (advertising wraps on trucks - those huge print ads you see applied to buses and transport trucks). Then on each blog he's simply posted the exact same information - basically an advertisement of his business.

Why did he do this? Well, blogger.com offers their blog URLS for free. To do something similar by registering regular .com domain names would have cost a chunk of change.

But this is not blogging. He's not creating regular posts for any of these blogs. And I think his approach may turn off potential customers, once they realize what he's done...