WHB: Freak Snow Storm and the Flu

My kitchen has been a little slow this week because I have been under the weather.  Despite my sniffles, I made it to Portland to see Christopher Kimball from America's Test Kitchen.  Fortunately I was able to convince Churchable to drive me because I was too exhausted.  My post this week is for Weekend Herb Blogging which is back with it's founder Kalyn from Kalyn's Kitchen.

The week before Thanksgiving, we went to Meemo's house in Spoke Vegas.  I spent my time cooking, making sure she had the things she needed, and decluttering a closet that no one could walk in - now you can and it has a whole empty shelf.  I decided early on to only cook tried-and-true dishes for my in-laws, but in our rush to leave I also grabbed those things that I had planned on making anyways.  This came with the added benefit of getting to scrub the refrigerator without having to move tons of stuff.  I had beets from my farmer Susie and I had been eyeing a recipe in Everyday Food for over 2 years, but did not have the courage to buy beets.  I had no clue about them and had never eaten them. 

Well the lovely red roots were roasted, chopped up and mixed into a beautiful Beet Risotto.  It tasted better than I thought it would.  The only problem is that I made it the main dish and it should have been a side dish.  Oh well, I will do that next time.  The flavor was sweet and creamy - not dirty like I thought it would be.  I know that it was decent because my teenage sister-in-law hates beets and she took a second helping.

After we got back, I still had more beets.  I should have stopped while I was ahead but I wanted to use up a mess of carrots and other items in army of produce that was successfully taking over my fridge.  I decided to pursue a recipe brought to mind by my farmer.  It was reminiscent of a carrot based pasta sauce I had while in college in 1998. I loved it but never found the product again nor a recipe.  My farmer mentioned that the macrobiotic movement in the 80's had a Winter Spaghetti Sauce that contained Carrots, Beets and Onions.  Running with this I looked on-line and found one thing that might have been close.  I made it and came up with the disaster below (luckily it was Vegan so the compost pile welcomed it).  I really would have preferred it to be more carrot than beet based.  I guess that I just needed less beets and more carrots.  I don't have the recipe or the link that I adapted but if any of you know of a recipe for a carrot based pasta sauce without tomatoes I would truly be interested.

Hopefully next week will be better and I can actually cook rather than letting the crockpot do it all - or at least smell the crockpot while it's cooking.  Churchable came home from work and commented that the house smelled great a couple of times this week and I felt a little left out.  Bye for now!