I am done with applications! I WIN!

We immediately sat down and had christmas.

Right now I am making lentil and millet burgers except for the part where I apparently dumped quinoa into the millet jar a week or so ago. Yeah. We are having lentil and brown rice burgers until I can be bothered to go through and separate everything out grain by grain.

No seriously. I did this once before when John started pouring a bag of brown rice into a half-filled jar and I said "uh, those are wheat berries." It was fine.

So I finished applications and we had presents and champagne and I came downstairs to cook delicious things and said HEY WAIT A MINUTE IT IS FRIDAY.


John has been cooking me all kinds of delicious things. I have been cooking some delicious things as well but with difficulty and under duress.

I spent last sunday afternoon with some beautiful cheese:
This stuff is called Pantaleo and it's an extremely pungent Sardinian goat cheese. I mean, I love goat cheese to spread and crumble right and left, but this stuff is hard and severe and really, really good. It was like goat cheese had mated with parmesan and given birth to its mutant delicious baby. It was so good.

I tried bits of it on crackers, but that was too severe.

Then I grated it really finely and rolled black olives in it. This was an optimal use.

Then I put both chopped olives and the grated cheese into a big red pepper boat. It was delicious but too sweet, due mostly to my running out of olives and so stuffing things sparsely. I would recommend lots of both black olives and cheese.

It was great.

Then later I chopped and crumbled some more of it into bits for stand-up-to-it salad.

I got beets. Beets! I love beets, especially pickled ones. I stuck them in the oven to roast for salad.

Beet and everything perfect salad

beets
pecans or walnuts
good pungent hard cheese
vinaigrette
parsley

This whole business was perfect.

Stick beets in some sort of baking pan and roast at 350F for 45 minutes or an hour. When they are done the skins outside should be a little shriveled and papery. You should also be able to smell BEETS throughout the house. It's not terribly pervasive, but it is distinctive.

When done, take the beets out of the oven and out of their pan. Let cool a little, until you can touch them easily. In the meantime, stick a couple handfuls of roughly chopped pecans or walnuts into your pan and stick it back in the oven at 250F. Let them toast for ten minutes, or until you can smell pronounced nut aroma when checking inside the oven.

When beets are cool enough to touch, peel them. This is perfectly easy with use of your thumb, and do not let me see anyone using his finger. Oh wait ok ok. Just pick off the stem end with your fingers, then peel off the outer skin. You can also squeeze the beet and make it pop out of the skin, but be careful, since beet stains. Chop the peeled beets into big salady chunks.

Get the nuts out of the oven. Chop up some cheese into medium yet sturdy chunks. Make vinaigrette if necessary.

Mix beets, cheese, nuts, and torn parsley with vinaigrette. Salt and pepper if you want; keep salt sparse since you already have super-pungent cheese. Notice the vibrant purple stains beets leave on the white white cheese. Eat voraciously.

Don't be surprised if your bodily functions display a certain pinkness the next day. Beet is used as a dye; did you notice?