Light and Momentary

Beauteous Magenta Soup

In the summer I often make a Nigella Lawson recipe: a gorgeous chilled beet soup. It is simple and stunning, just roasted beets, peeled and tossed in the blender with stock, sour cream, cumin, and fresh lime juice.

Yesterday I was trying to decide what to do with a batch of roasted beets. The idea of a nice beefy borscht had some appeal, but I didn't want to do more chopping. So instead I did something experimental that worked splendidly.

In the fridge I had a container full of leftover filling for stuffed peppers, made from a blend of ground beef and pork cooked together with onions, garlic, and a bunch of kale that I blitzed to smithereens in the food processor. (In my experience, kids (and many grownups) are more willing to eat leafy greens in tiny pieces.) When this was cooked, I tipped in a pile of leftover rice and tucked the mixture inside the last of the CSA peppers. I stashed the remaining filling inside the fridge, where, honestly, I forgot all about it.

Yesterday morning I rediscovered the container full of filling and thought to myself, "What if I heated up the soup that I usually serve chilled...WITH the leftover meat/rice/veggies?" My friends, it was fabulous-- meaty and satisfying and earthy and sweet, with the most gorgeous, soul-satisfying color. 

So if you too like the idea of borscht but don't have the patience for the chopping (does anyone else get frustrated with the way that beets roll around unpredictably when you try to chop them, leaving fuchsia trails on your cutting board and perhaps your clothes?), consider this menu sequence instead: stuffed peppers (make extra filling) with beets roasted alongside them, followed a day or two later by blender beet soup, heated gently with the leftover filling.

I am going to eat another bowl of it for breakfast, feeling happy and frugal. It's like a matryoshka doll of leftover management: the leftover rice went into the leftover filling which went into the soup, which offers a treat for both the belly and the eyes.

Low effort, high reward

During the pandemic my college roommates and I began talking via Zoom every Sunday. As life has returned to normal, there are more interruptions. Sometimes nobody can make it; it's rare for all five of us to be there for the whole hour. But it's so nice to have a regular time to see each other's faces and stay caught up.

For the past few weeks I've been cooking during the calls. (I usually keep myself muted so the kitchen noises don't disrupt the call.) This is the time of year when we have both CSA bounty and CSA fatigue, so it's been hard to stay on top of the veggie situation. But a quiet hour chatting with friends turns out to be a perfect time in which to do some chopping and roasting. It's also been a good time for trying some new things in the kitchen, without the weeknight pressure to get a meal on the table efficiently.

Last week, for the first time, I tried making pickled daikon. I've always enjoyed pickled radish at Korean restaurants, but in the US "pickle" and "cucumber" are practically synonymous and I'd never attempted to make it at home before. We get a lot of daikon from our farmer, and we only eat up some of it in slaws and stir-fries. I decided I'd see how home-pickled daikon turned out.

To my surprise, I've been eating it all week, in everything. If I take leftover stew to work for lunch, I put some pickled daikon in a baggie to sprinkle on top after it's heated up. This morning i made myself a little batch of egg salad, and I added olives and pickled daikon before I scooped it into hollowed-out tomato halves. Like any pickle, it's sweet and sour and salty. Unlike cucumber pickles, it is still deliciously crunchy after a week in the fridge. It's such a nice flavor/texture contrast that my first batch is almost gone.

If you also enjoy pickled radish at Korean restaurants, or if you're seeing beautiful daikon at fall farmer's markets, or if you just prefer your pickles nice and crunchy and want to try something new, it couldn't be any easier. Here's what you do:

Dissolve 1/2 c. sugar and 1 t. salt in 1/2 c. rice vinegar and 1/2 c. hot water. Peel and cube a pound of daikon. The recipe says half-inch cubes; mine vary in size. Combine and leave at room temperature for 24 hours. Refrigerate thereafter. 

A harder one, an easier one

Andrea asked, "What is the one weightlifting exercise that has given you the results you like the most?"

If for some reason I could only ever do one exercise for the rest of my life, it would probably be deadlifting. It is such a fabulous full-body exercise: traps, lats, abs, glutes, hamstrings, quads (and erector spinae, but most us are not saying, "Yeah, I really want my spinal erectors to POP.")

HOWEVER, deadlift form is (a) hard to learn and (b) important to get right. If you're not familiar with the form, I would say it's worth working with a trainer for a few sessions in which you specifically focus on that particular skill. You can figure out the nuances of a bicep curl on your own, but it's much harder to evaluate your own deadlift.

So if I were making one recommendation to a pal who was only willing to do a little bit of lifting, I would recommend assisted pull-ups. They are extremely accessible and will probably offer you an opportunity to progress rapidly. You can do them at home with bands if you hate going to the gym, or you can do them at the gym with a machine if you don't love working out at home.

Pull-ups are fantastic core exercises. I did not imagine that pull-ups could strengthen my abs, but it turns out they are a great ab exercise. I didn't know how much I needed lats and traps until I worked on my lats and traps, but lifting has eliminated all of the weird aches and twinges that used to cause me back pain at regular intervals. (Also, if you need somebody to move something heavy, I'm your girl.) Obviously, they're terrific for delts and biceps as well.

One caution: don't start assisted pull-ups expecting them to become unassisted pull-ups on a short timeline. Three months was not enough time for 13 out of 17 female participants to get an unassisted pull-up in a study described by the New York Times. It was not enough time for me; it took me a little over four months of consistent 3x/week workouts prioritizing chin-ups and related movements before I could do an unassisted chin-up. (I've still never done an unassisted pull-up, because I don't care about the pull-up/chin-up distinction.) But there is so much benefit just waiting to be gleaned from assisted pull-up workouts, no matter what your trajectory looks like.

So there you go: two choices, pick your fave!

Getting the wheels turning

Somehow almost three weeks have elapsed since my last post. Throwing up a quick one to get the ball rolling again. More soon!