If I can give beets a huge hug for being so cute and delicious, I totally would. I love beets – with its uniquely sweet flavor and lovely texture — but I don’t like cooking them much at home. It’s difficult to rise off all the red color that bleeds after cooking these little root vegetables! But I learned recently that I can reduce the mess if I roast them in the oven wrapped in aluminum foil instead of boiling them in hot water (which I used to do), so I’m not as intimidated as I was before.
I picked up three medium-sized beets at a local Asian market the other day and turned them into a quinoa salad, inspired by a lovely scarlet quinoa side dish from M Cafe de Chaya.
Scarlet Quinoa
2-3 medium size beets
1 cups dry quinoa
2 cups water or your favorite broth
Handful of parsley, chopped
For the Dressing:
¼ cup vinegar (more if you like)
¼ cup olive oil (more if you like)
Salt and pepper
Beets: Preheat oven to 350 degree F. Wash the beats and wrap them individually in aluminum foil. Put the beets in the oven and cook for about 45 minutes, or until they are tender. Take them out of the oven, peel and cut them into medium-size cubes.
Quinoa: After rinsing the quinoa, toss it in a pot with 2 cups of cold liquid (I usually use water). Bring the liquid and quinoa to a boil in high heat. Once the liquid comes to a boil, cover the pot with a lid, reduce the heat to medium low and let it simmer, until the liquid is gone (about 15-20 minutes). Turn off the heat, and let the quinoa sit for about 10 minutes, with the lid still on.
Putting it all together: Add the beets and cooked quinoa in a bowl. Add the parsley and the dressing. Salt and pepper to taste. Toss well.
My goal, not just this year but for the rest of my life, is to treat myself with care, compassion, and love. I sometime wonder why so many of us, myself included, are overly critical of ourselves. Is it nature or nurture? Well, I suppose it’s the latter because I don’t believe that we are born with the preconceived notion that we’re not good enough. But as we go through life, we encounter obstacles that make us falsely believe that we are indeed not worthy of wonderful things in the world, like happiness, love, or in my case, good food.
Equally as respectable as classically-trained celebrity chefs (with their new restaurants popping up all over the world like zits on a teenage kid’s face) are some of the emerging “home cooks,” who, despite their lack of formal culinary training, bring a joy of cooking to average food lovers like myself, thanks to a powerful vehicle like 
One home cook who is virtually unknown in the Western market and has gone completely under the food-obsessed American media radar is 
Her Carrot and Tuna Salad (she says that this recipe, “has proved to be one of the most popular”) is a perfect representation of what you’ll find in her cookbook. There’s nothing special about this salad, really – just a mixture of julienned carrots with finely chopped onion and garlic, and a canned tuna tossed in mustard dressing – but when you take a bite into it, you will taste something so familiar but new, something so simple but robust, and something so healthy but hearty. I made this salad for the first time for dinner last night, and believe me, I was under her magical spell just after one bite!
As much as I love to cook and bake, you’ll be surprised to see how little cookbooks I own. Cookbooks, for me, are serious business and I don’t take them lightly. Before a book can secure a coveted spot on my lovely Ikea bookshelf, it must undergo an extensive selection process. And although the criteria I set are fairly simple and straightforward, it’s surprising to learn how many books actually make the cut.
I’m not too critical about the amount of photographs inside though. Believe it or not, some of my all-time favorite cookbooks have absolutely no pictures in them. For me, the written words are as delicious, or even more decadent, than pretty glossies. Well-chosen words tell a beautiful story, recreate a special experience, and paint a colorful flavor in my mind. And that is a real treat.
Well, speaking of healthy and satisfying, I prepared this huge bowl of salad for dinner tonight (serves 2 as dinner, 4 as appetizers). This did not come from Krieger’s book, but it was inspired by a couple of recipes she created that used some of the same ingredients. This is a combination of savory smoked salmon, tangy goat cheese, meaty sautéed Portobello and Shitake mushrooms, creamy cannelloni beans, red onion slices, capers and a vinaigrette dressing on a bed of baby spinach. I bought each ingredient with an intention of creating couple dishes, but I got lazy so I decided to throw everything in a bowl and call it a salad. Despite the sloppy exterior, the salad was absolutely divine, healthy and complete guilt free.
Lavender and OliVE 