Found!

Here is my inaugural beet recipe (Mark Bittman), chosen for its simplicity and because I love all involved ingredients:

Beets With Garlic-Walnut Sauce Time: 1 hour 20 minutes

Time: 1 hour 20 minutes

2 pounds red beets, about 4 large, trimmed of greens

1/4 cup olive oil

6 cloves garlic, peeled

1/2 cup walnuts

2 tablespoons to 1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice

Salt and black pepper to taste

1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley leaves, for garnish.

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Wash beets well. While still wet, wrap them individually in foil and place on a cookie sheet or roasting pan. Bake beets, undisturbed, for 60 to 90 minutes, until a thin-bladed knife pierces each with little resistance. (They may cook at different rates; remove each one when it is done.)

2. Meanwhile, put oil in a skillet over medium-low heat. When it is warm, add garlic and cook until fragrant and beginning to soften, about 6 minutes. Add walnuts and continue to cook until they begin to color, about another 4 minutes. Let mixture cool slightly and then put it in a small food processor; process until you have a relatively smooth paste. Add orange juice to taste and sprinkle with salt and lots of pepper.

3. After beets have cooled, peel off skins. Slice beets into wedges or cubes and toss with dressing. Taste and adjust seasoning, garnish with parsley and serve.

Yield: 4 servings.

***

I'm going to make the salad this afternoon, for a cocktail party this evening. I hope it goes well - for my sake & the sake of others in attendance! I don't foresee myself messing this up, though.

Sad news: the balance pods I ordered (on 5/30) won't be shipped until August. My mailing address is going to change twice before these li'l guys (conceivably) arrive. WTF, Spri? I understand that the pods' promotion in Self caused a glut of orders, but August? Really? Guess I'll stick with crunches until then...

Beet it.

Lately I've been eating a lot (a lot) of Swiss chard, either with sweet potatoes and onions or just sauteed in broth. I'm not sick of it, per se, but I feel that I should branch out to other leafy greens: Collard greens, Kale, and the like. Which leads me to the topic of beets.

As a kid, I hated the cold beet soup my mom made during the summer. It was the same shade as Pepto-Bismol and made the whole fridge smell like hard cooked eggs. Summers of Borscht fostered my early, negative association with beets, which lingered until approximately April, 2005, when I tried (and loved) pickled beets. Beyond the pickled variety, though, I know nothing about this richly-hued veggie - a knowledge void I would like to fill.

Yesterday afternoon, while bumming around the grocery store (I had to stay out of the apartment while it was being shown to a prospective renter), I almost bought a bunch of beets. "Hey," I thought, "I can eat the greens per usual, and..." And what? Roast the beets proper? I chickened out, not having a recipe in mind (and also remembering the bunch of chard I already had in the fridge). Consider this a call for beet recipes: how do you all eat your beats? Baked in the oven? Sauteed? And how do you prefer the greens? I'm going to sniff out some recipes and will report back with my results.

Back from the dead!

Or, in a more "Tale of Two Cities" vein, RECALLED TO LIFE.

It's been a busy few weeks around these parts of town. May 22nd was graduation, and my whole family came out for the affair. I was glad for the parental support, indifferent though I was about the ceremony. Not indifferent about the degree, mind you, just not psyched about sitting in an overheated auditorium for over three hours, hearing lists and lists of names read. Never mind that I was dehydrated & mysteriously sleep deprived & sitting by complete strangers. Phew! I am glad that I walked; lots of grad students don't, and I think that, unremarkable though the event proper was, I would've been sad if I'd passed on the opportunity. As is the case with so many missed opportunities.

I've been working at the Target food court ("Food Ave") for the past six weeks, which has fortified my character in a number of ways. It is true that I could have loafed for the month of June - I'd saved enough money for bills and minor recreation - but I wanted to earn a bit of extra cash for the move and to create a time commitment to help me structure my remaining days here. I don't know about you, but I accomplish more when I have more to do. I'm thinking back to my first summer in Northampton, when I worked approximately ten hours a week (if that) and managed to get nothing done. When I have more on my plate, I'm more conscious of time and how I spend it. The strategy has worked, so far; I've been steadily applying to jobs in Madison, researching Dietetics grad programs, reading, reading, running. I have yet to start my first needlepoint project, but that's next.

A cloudy day, birdcalls and street sounds seeming far off.

Chocolate lovers, and lovers of anything sweet: you must try Dagoba's blueberry lavender chocolate. It is the best thing ever, and by this, I mean ever. I'm pretty excited to try their mint bar (also flavored with rosemary), but not much compares to lavender infusions.

Excerpts:

I let the water run, full force, from the faucet into the drain, for somebody's pleasure down below. Noises coming from far away, I decided then, the ones that have nothing to do with your own life, can be more important than anything anyone says in your own ear.

(from Janet Kauffman's The Easter We Lived in Detroit)

Sometimes, the stories, and the shadows of stories, assumed their own shapes and lay like giants, almost close enough to touch. If Joe stayed out all night, that would be news, too, a turn of events, connected with other events elsewhere, entwined, like the soft, continuous organs of living things, warm for a long while even out of the body, collected in bowls.

(from Janet Kauffman's News)

This Couple

Now is when we love to sit before mirrors
with a dark beer or hand out leaflets
at chain-link gates or come together after work
listening to each other's hard day. The engine dies,
no one hurried to go in. We might
walk around in the yard not making a plan.
The freeway is heard but there's no stopping
progress, and the week has barely begun. Then
we are dressed. It rains. Our heads rest
against the elevator wall inhaling a stranger;
we think of cliffs we went off
with our laughing friends. The faces
we put our lips to. Our wonderful sex
under whatever we wear. And of the car
burning on the side of the highway. Jukeboxes
we fed. Quarters circulating with our prints.
Things we sent away for. Long drives. The rain. Cafes
where we ate late and once only. Eyes of an animal
in the headlamps. The guestbooks that verify
our whereabouts. Your apple core in the ashtray.
The pay toilets where we sat without paper. Rain.
Articles left with ex-lovers. The famous
ravine of childhood. Movie lines we've stood in
when it really came down. Moments
we have felt forsaken waiting for the others
to step from the wrought-iron compartment,
or passing through some town with the dial
on a Mexican station, wondering for the life of us,
where are we going and when we would meet.

C.D. Wright

It certainly sounds like a squirrel is stuck in my wall. Or ceiling. That, or the masons refacing my building are dragging a delicate pick across the bricks. Actually, no: I am decided that it is a squirrel.

Montreal was excellent! I'd forgotten what it's like to be in a city (a real city), and I did all those things that are impossibilities in rural suburbia: rode the Metro, had leisurely meals in sidewalk cafes, perused the erotic cinemas, and so on. Yes, erotic cinemas and peep shows are everywhere in Montreal, as is coleslaw. Go figure. I ate more coleslaw this weekend than I have during the past two summers, or three.

Returning to Massachusetts, we stopped for lunch in Burlington at a place called Henry's Diner. This was a late lunch - 3:30 or so - and the place was packed with students in sweatpants, hoodies, and flip flops. They ordered breakfast foods with great enthusiasm, and I thought, "Weird! It's like, mid-afternoon." Then it hit me: Sunday mid-afternoons = hangover time! I could not quite believe that I'd forgotten those college Sundays when I stayed in bed until 1:00, and then got up only to purchase a Dasani, a diet ginger ale, and a Powerade from the machines in the basement, but I remembered fast. And chuckled.

Sadly and predictably, I returned to a pile of work. It's the last week of the semester and I'm working both jobs (old and new), scrapping to finish my screenplay and my independent study. It was raining this morning, but the cloudcover just broke. Lilacs are in bloom; I wish I could wrap myself in a comforter and read Richard Hugo.

Off to Montreal in a few hours to celebrate my birthday/Eric's birthday/our anniversary, but for now am detained at the Key Office, empty as it is. I am the most excited about this minitrip! But I am also afraid: filled with fear about swine flu. (Or H1N1, if that is the correct way of referencing this strain.) When I woke up this morning I felt more than a little woozy and I'm not sure if this owes to my general lack of sleep (was awoken @ 4:10 by screaming, but that's another story) or to swine flu. There could be other causes for this lethargy: I could just have a cold, or a different strain of flu. Or, I might be hypochondrizing myself into a state of near-hysteria. Whatever. Amherst College has two confirmed cases of pandemic-making swine flu, and the fear of God has been struck into me. After work, I am going to get a latte and pray that it revives me. If it does not, my paranoia will remain unwavering.

In other news, I hit the quarter century mark this week. The day itself tended toward anticlimax: I was scheduled at both my jobs and didn't get home until after 9:00 (at which point I ate some delicious, strawberry-rhubarb birthday pie). But the approach and the aftermath were both uncanny. I can no longer say I'm in my early twenties, but I'm OK with this, I think. I'm a month away from finishing my master's program, in the best shape I've been in since high school, and about to return to my true homeland. All in all, things are pretty good.

Except my hair. Yesterday, I went to my normal salon for a trim - I'm hoping for an even longer, shinier ponytail - and the stylist (not my normal stylist) butchered my hair into a blunt mutation of the Rachel 'do. Yes, that Rachel 'do. Though Eric assured me my hair looks "great," Ali would not stop singing the "Friends" theme song. All I could think was, "Chin-length layers? Srsly?" Because those look bad on everyone. The worst part is, I can do nothing but wait for my hair to grow out. Siiiiiiiiiigh.

I realize that was an extremely vain paragraph, but I am filled with woe: both by my potential contamination by the swine flu of death and by this redonkulous haircut.

Canada, I hope you cure all ills.