Call me crazy, but I love beets, with their ruby red color and sweet flavor. I’ve known that beets are nutritional powerhouses, with powerful nurtients and anti-oxidents, sometimes credited for the long and healthy lives of many Russian people. While I’ve been known to eat beets out of a can, I’ve enjoyed them most as part of salads, often combined with spinach, goat cheese and orange sections at some of my favorite restaurants.

I’d been intimidated about cooking them myself until recently, when I purchased some at the farmer’s market and challenged myself to conquer my fears. Well, it couldn’t be much easier to cook perfect beets myself, I’ve now learned. I created this salad to cut the sweetness of beets, and I now have a new favorite way to enjoy these root vegetables. I’d recommend serving these with a simple French omelet with salami and cheddar. Next, I’m going to figure out how to cook those lovely green and purple leaves that I cut off the beets.

French Beet Salad

Prep (10 minutes) + Cook (45 minutes)
6 servings

3 medium to large beets
2 tsp. grainy Dijon mustard
2 tsp. white wine vinegar

Scrub the beets, cut off the greens, leaving about 1 inch of stems, and steam them in about 1 inch of boiling water for 45 minutes, until they are fork tender. Drain the beets, rinse them in cold water, and peel the skins, using your fingers or a vegetable peeler. (Note: you can cook the beets up to 24 hours in advance.) Dice the beats and place them in a medium bowl. In a small bowl, combine the mustard and vinegar, and pour them over the beets, stirring thoroughly. Refrigerate the salad for at least 20 minutes and up to 48 hours. Serve it with a salami and cheddar omelet.

The 5 year anniversary of The Scramble is coming up next month–it’s hard to believe. This has now officially become the longest job I’ve ever held, and it’s certainly the best (even better than selling salt water taffy on Stearn’s Wharf in Santa Barbara and serving lunch on a leisure boat in Turkey!).

But here’s the dilemma–how to celebrate? Should I run birthday wishes from longtime subscribers in the newsletter, dedicate an issue to recipes with 5 ingredients or my favorite recipes (and how would I choose?), or, as my friend and colleague Jeanne suggests, create a musical cooking video on You Tube? Let me know if you have any suggestions for how to celebrate 5 years of healthy, easy dinner menus. Thanks, as always, for your support!

Few things can get me more inspired to cook than stopping by one of our local farmer’s markets. Today I pulled over at a roadside stand and picked up freshly picked broccoli, white corn, juicy cherries and tart blueberries.

While the fresh flavor of local fruits and veggies can’t be beat, it’s encouraging to know that these delicious fruits are also health boosters for my family. Sally Squires, health writer for the Washington Post, likens them to powerful health-boosting drugs in her column this week (thanks to our friend and fellow fruit smoothie fanatic Hampton Dellinger for sending me the link!): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/20/AR2008062002600_pf.html

If you are lucky enough to have a farm stand or farmer’s market in your town, take advantage of what’s fresh, local and delicious this summer.

P.S. After numerous recommendations from Scramblers, I finally purchased my own copy of Barbara Kingsolver’s latest book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, to learn more about her experience of growing all of her own foods for a year.

Or, as my grandfather who lived to be 94 used to say, “Everything in Moderation.” This op-ed in the New York Times about the depletion of wild salmon is unsettling: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/opinion/09grescoe.html?ex=1213675200&en=7a1186909233042e&ei=5070&emc=eta1

I’m pretty convinced that if the world population continues to grow, and the earth’s people continue to eat more meat and fish and fewer vegetables, and we continue to overeat and waste so much food, our planet is going to have a heck of a time sustaining our eating habits.

For now, I’m going to stick with my philosophy of eating a wide variety of foods in a sustainable manner by buying only what I intend to use, using what I buy, focusing on plant based foods as much as possible, and trying not to overeat, which is an unhealthy form of wasting food.

Let me know if you have any other ideas for sustainable eating.

Ah, vacation. It sounds so relaxing, especially since we’re heading off on an exotic eco-adventure in Costa Rica with the kids. Then why am I so stressed out? It must be that pre-vacation lengthy to do list that I have to get through–laundry, packing, drop off the animals at the kennel, get haircuts, medicines, find passports, cancel newspaper delivery, get ahead on work–you know the drill. If only we didn’t have to get so stressed out getting ready for vacation, then get wound up again when we get back and need to get our lives back in order and unpack, do laundry, catch up on work… Then we feel like we need a vacation all over again!

Still, I do feel incredibly lucky that we are able to go on such an exotic vacation this year and I am very eager to try the cuisine of Central America–I hear from friends who have been to Costa Rica that the mangos, bananas and fish are all exquisite–speaking of mangos, I hope you have a chance to try my new dish inspired by a Mexican recipe for Mango and Black Bean Salad this week–let me know what you think! I’ll look forward to sharing my new recipe discoveries with you when we get back from our adventure (and get through that awful post-vacation to-do list!).

If your family is made up of both vegetarians and meat eaters, you may have developed some tricks for adapting recipes so you don’t have to make multiple meals. Clearly, meat eaters can also enjoy meatless meals, but the reverse isn’t true for someone who is a true vegetarian.

Subscriber Mary Brown suggested this adaptation for chicken nuggets: “I love your recipes because so many of them are vegetarian friendly, so wanted to add another tip for you. I was making chicken strips for the majority of our family but wanted protein for my vegetarian daughter. I simply took a soy burger, cut it into strips, dipped it in the same mixture that I was going to use for our chicken strips and cooked it in butter and olive oil in a second pan. My daughter loved it.”

If you have more tips for converting your recipes, please post them here.