So I was talking to Sam about a dresser I want to refinish for his room. And I was telling him I thought we could choose maybe two colors and paint and stencil it. He got very excited, stating that he wants it to be purple (there’s a shocker). Then he added that it should be “purple with fire!”

So I explained that I was thinking something maybe a bit calmer, you know, since his bedroom is for sleeping and stuff. We really needed to think of something nice and relaxing.

He thought for a millisecond and then said, “Oh! Lava! Lava is relaxing.”

“Uuuuummmm. . . really? I was thinking of something like water or flowers or leaves . . .”

“No! It has to be something that burns people! Fire! Or lava!”

“So you want a purple dresser with fire and/or lava painted on it?”

“Yes!”

Well, so glad I asked.

Well, first let me just say thank you to all who participated in our berry carnival for the most recent From Dirt To Dinner!

We’re essentially going to do a 180 now and go from an ingredient that virtually everyone loves to one that eludes and, for some, disgusts: THE BEET.

At this time last year I was still trying to figure out the beet. With each CSA delivery came a fresh bunch, and for several weeks I tortured myself with horrible recipes I’d found online that bordered on inedible. I was about to give up on the big burgundy bulb when a friend emailed me a supposedly “delicious” recipe for Herbed Goat Cheese, Roasted Beet, and Watercress Salad.

Now, obviously when you bread and bake goat cheese you are going to end up with something that is all kinds of wonderful, but here’s the thing - the beets are awesome, and it’s because they are ROASTED! Yes, the secret of the beet is simply to roast the sucker first.

Every beet recipe I have tried and enjoyed since then first involved roasting them whole. It’s very easy to do and makes all the difference, in my opinion. Simply wash and trim the greens down to about an inch and then wrap the beets in foil. Then you want to bake them on about 400 degrees for about an hour, give or take depending on the size, until they are tender.

Once that’s done you just let them cool until you can peel them, which is super-easy once they are cooked this way. Trim the root and the top off and then the peel just slides away.

Now you can slice them up however you want them to be and refrigerate them until you’re ready for ‘em.

And then you can wash your hands so it doesn’t look like you’ve had some kind of grotesque accident in the kitchen.

They do pair wonderfully with goat cheese; there are lots and lots of recipes out there that couple the two for good reason, so that salad above remains a favorite for us. I’ve been known to add some toasted walnuts to it, making it a great entree if I do say so myself. And I almost never use watercress but instead whatever type of greens I happen to have.

I also found this very similar recipe with those breaded goat cheese medallions but with pasta and sauteed chard. (This seasonal produce guide on the Martha website is so helpful, by the way!) I happened to have a gorgeous bunch of  rainbow chard from the CSA along with my huge bunch of beets, so this is what I made last week.

It was yummy.

Certainly you don’t want to eat medallions of baked goat cheese every single time you eat beets though, at least not if you are getting them from a CSA and are receiving them en masse every week. So it’s important to remember that once you know the secret of the beet - the ROASTING - then you can enjoy them easily and simply.

Alice Waters has a lovely Marinated Beet Salad recipe in The Art of Simple Food that just combines roasted beets (that’s right, Alice Waters roasts them first too, so I think we can officially accept this as The Word) sprinkled with some vinegar and salt and then tossed with a little olive oil.

And that makes for some great and easy beets, which really are a quite delicious vegetable, not something to just sort of “deal with” when it comes to you in your CSA share.

So, anyone else out there eating beets? Not from a can? If you’ve not yet tried them I really encourage you to give them a go. Just, you know, roast ‘em first. And feel free to share.

I think it’s safe to say we’ve already been doing a little too much car travel this summer.

Yesterday Robby woke up from his nap in his bed and, while still half-asleep, exasperatingly asked, “Mooooooom, are we THERE YET?!”

I guess a Not So Manic Monday is in order; we’ haven’t had onE in a long, long while.

We’ve had a lot of strawberries in our house over the course of the past 3 weeks.

And one favorite recipe from many (other than just eating or slicing them over vanilla ice cream…mmmmmm…) was this one for Whole Wheat Strawberry Pancakes. Indeed, I’ve made them twice. And I wish I had recorded it when everyone at the table had their first bite because I think Sam might have actually screamed. Like, loudly. And then everyone told me how much they loved me. And how I am “The Best.” So of course I made them twice.

This is Sam giving me the flashing double thumbs up, the highest possible food rating in our house.

I often make pancakes that have some combination of whole wheat and all purpose flour, but I love that this recipe calls for 100% whole wheat. Something about having the fresh strawberries in there changes it up enough that they don’t feel too dense or heavy. They’re quite yummy and I feel like on the whole, they make for a pretty healthy breakfast too. Well, except maybe if you put as much syrup on them as my husband does.

On the local front, we picked all those berries ourselves from an organic farm nearby, Willow Creek Orchards. The whole wheat flour was from Daisy Mill and purchased through our buying club, as were the milk, butter, egg, and maple syrup. I used a full cup of regular milk instead of buttermilk, and used ground flax instead of wheat bran.

Once those main ingredients are accounted for, I’m basically left to the same non-local list I had when I made the rhubarb muffins. It’s some of the baking basics: salt, baking powder, baking soda, and I used cinnamon in place of the allspice. I’m hoping that as I run out of these items I’ll be able to replace them with at least slightly more local alternatives, but really I have no clue as to how one finds local baking powder, you know? It seems wasteful to replace them before I’m through each bottle though, so I guess I have some time to figure that out. And I vaguely remember them having this problem in the book “Plenty,” so at least I’m not the only one who has trouble here.

Anyone else been using local berries lately? If so, join on in and share a link. Please read a little more about what to include in your post for From Dirt To Dinner here.

And coming up on July 2nd we’ve got BEETS!

Strawberry season is passing by quite quickly in my area (has it passed? It may even be over already . . .), but luckily we managed to do some serious damage on the strawberry front. We’ve consumed and/or put up over ten pounds in the past two weeks - about 6 pints went into the freezer in a simple syrup, two more pints became strawberry freezer jam, and I also did one pint of this really easy fresh jam.

On Friday I’ll talk a bit more about how we enjoyed the rest of them for the From Dirt To Dinner Carnival. We’re featuring BERRIES this week, any berries that happen to be in season in your area. In general, berries seem to have such short seasons, maybe because everyone gobbles them up so quickly. But if you have happened upon any local berries lately, I hope you’ll stop by and share what you did with them.

Also, I wanted to point out that the main info page for From Dirt To Dinner, the page that the button links to and the page that I am linking to every time I write, “From Dirt To Dinner,” has a schedule down at the bottom that will tell you what is coming up. We’ve planned it out through the end of August so that people who want to participate can see ahead of time what they should be searching out in their markets - hopefully we’ve done a good job and have estimated appropriately when each ingredient will be in season for most areas.

See?

BERRIES - STRAWBERRIES/GOOSEBERRIES/RASPBERRIES/BLUEBERRIES - June 18th

BEETS - July 2nd

CABBAGE - July 16th

SUMMER SQUASH/ZUCCHINI - July 30th

TOMATOES - August 13th

CORN - August 27th

Much to my horror, Robby did not nap today and then made it through the day relatively unscathed. Normally a lack of nap would have resulted in major meltdowns sometime around dinner or possibly before. But no, he was going all afternoon and into the evening. He didn’t even go to bed much earlier than usual. Any parent of a child who has stopped napping surely knows the hideous fate that awaits.

What on earth am I going to do this summer with one, and very possibly TWO boys who don’t nap during the hot, searing afternoon?! We’re going to be home, together, and awake, apparently, All. Summer. Long.

Mommy needs a nap.