Labour Day Weekend

In about 1 hour planes will start to screech over my back garden and I will feel strong bonds with residents of the serene Gaza Strip and beautiful downtown Kabul. With the earth moving under my feet and the foundations of the house shaking, I am feeling the need to cook. The cooking things that stood out this week are: The arguement over no knead bread on SOUNDS LIKE CANADA, on the CBC with Shelagh Rodgers, Liz Driver and Bonnie Stern. I might have to try the bread out this weekend and pressure cookers are beginning to sound intriuqing. 'The husband' hates the CBC and thinks me and a pressure cooker could be a very bad mix. In the Bread agruement Liz Driver states that pioneers used yeast usually gotten from the local brewery. http://www.cbc.ca/soundslikecanada/foodanddrink.html or http://www.sullivanstreetbakery.com/recipes/noknead.html Maybe thats what influenced my second discovery: The Grand River Brewing Company where I met and chatted with the knowledgeable Brewer Rob Creighton. Really who could resist "Bumbleberry Beer" on a road sign. He tells me that one of the beers I purchased was best drunk from a chalice. Great website with recipes with beer. http://www.grandriverbrewing.com/index.php And last but not least I also bought myself a John Deere..... cast iron frying pan.... who knew. I visited one of my favourite stores, The TSC http://www.tscstores.com/. They have the neatest stuff you ever didn't know you actually needed, but sadly no chalices. I need to season my John Deere today and drink my beer, I have no idea what's on the menu yet but I feel the need for earthiness and harvest, maybe I am just lacking iron... my new pan has added fringe benefits in that department. Now if I only had found the 'holy grail' literally, I would have a perfect chalice for my beer while I crane my neck looking for those F18's.

"til Burnham wood comes to Dunsinaine"

I may have spelt that wrong, I believe it was Duncan's line in Macbeth. I do know it was from Macbeth as it was continually quoted during my childhood. We lived on Burnhamthorpe Road, but I digress.

I was channeling Lady Macbeth this weekend, by cooking beets. If you have ever contemplated murder, peel a few beets and you might just get it out of your system. Its the closest most of us will ever come to oozing sanguine out of a living thing , other then CSI I suppose, and really that's a good thing.

Beets are something you either love or hate. I happen to love them either roasted or pickled, red or golden, canned or fresh. In France you can buy them in fours pre-roasted and peeled in a shrink wrapped package. Take them home and slice them up into almost anything. I particularly love them cold, in salads and turning everything around them a delightful shade of pink.

One of our very first dinners with "the husband" as new house owners was a beet dressing on Boston lettuce from Martha Stewart. I processed it in a too small mini chopper and it went everywhere in the the kitchen and on me. Undaunted and slightly pinker I poured this magenta sauce over the bright chartreuse leaves of lettuce and it looked like something off a Disney set. Our guests came running to see the what the "oh my goodness that's a bit strange looking" thing was in the kitchen. It tasted good though.

Here is my Garlicky Pink Salad.

I bunch of beets. (3-6 depending on the size)

salt and pepper

3/4 cup of walnut halves

Juice of 1/2 lemon

roughly the same amount of Walnut oil ( or Olive Oil if you have not)

1 garlic clove

3/4 cup of Balkan yogurt (optional)

Place the beets in a baking dish with a lid, lightly season with salt and pepper. Pour enough water in the bottom to cover the bottom by about 1cm. Put the lid on and roast for about 1 hour at 400' or until tender. Remove from the oven and let cool. Toast the walnut halves for about 8 minutes until fragrant, remove from oven and let cool.

Combine, lemon juice and oil and grate the clove of the garlic into it.

Peel the beets and roughly chop, crumble the walnut meats in your hands into the beets and the juice and lemon and carefully combine. Season with salt and pepper. Gently but firmly stir in the yogurt and let the flavours mingle for about an hour in fridge if its wildly hot or at room temp if not so.

You could stop finish the salad before the yogurt bit but you would miss the lovely pinkness of it all or crumble feta cheese instead.

Blast some 'Pink' on the ipod and get this party started, just for the heck of it.