Summer                                                             Most Heat Moon

Picked up Chez Panisse on vegetables, one of my favorite cookbooks, right up there with Joy of Cooking and How the World Cooks Chicken. When I called Kate this morning, she was at Mt. Rushmore with Jon and Ruth. I only had one question. What do I do with the beets after I clean them? Oh. You don’t take the tops off first? Too late for that. Boil them for 15 minutes then slip them out of their skins? OK. I can do that. Go back to Borglum.

Cooking is something I really enjoy, but I’ve avoided it for a couple of years now. Kate’s home and my need to cook has diminished since she’s enjoyed getting back in the kitchen after a long absence from regular cooking. I don’t cook like Kate does. She’s a recipe gal and a damned good one. Just ask the Woollies who said her meal a couple of years ago was the best they’d had at a Woolly meeting.

Me, I’m a let’s look at the ingredients and see what we might make kind of cook. A bit more, no, a lot more, free form. That means I make wonderful surprises and the occasional ghastly surprise. I’ve gotten better over the years so the ratio has widened in favor of wonderful over ghastly, but I’ve not eliminated them.

So I’m trying to recreate the beet salads I like so much when I go out. First step, roast the beets. 400 degrees covered with foil. Large baking dish. But, again, I’m starting out behind because I’ve already boiled and peeled the beets. After removing their tops to begin with. I’m not expecting it to turn out perfect, there are a lot more beets where those came from. But it should be interesting over the next couple of days to see what I can produce from roasted, pre-boiled and prematurely topped beets.