Green and Purple

Thursday again, the Farmer's market.  I replenished my supply of vegetables and fruit for the week.  Beautifully sticking out of my bag were the leafy parts of a bunch of beets.  Two people that came into my office exclaimed "Oh I love beet greens!"  and proceeded to describe a favourite way to prepare them.  I'm embarrassed to admit that I never even thought to eat the beet greens.  I always threw them out.  Oh the waste!  All these years I had missed out on some amazingly sweet yet salty and buttery leaves.  I prepared them tonight with basil, tomatoes, red pepper, shredded beets and carrots, and apples.  Dressing was olive oil, lemon, salt+pepper.   Here's what it looked like on a beautiful teal plate (made by an Emily Carr student!  Got it at the Christmas sale):

Symbiosis

One day rolls into the next.  This is the beginning of term and I come home tired, wired, with a list of evening tasks, the majority of which have to do with feeding myself or the bacteria.  As I was walking back from the grocery store with a gallon of milk and a couple pounds of sugar, it dawned on me that I was solely carrying fuel for the bacteria.  They will eat all this, I marveled.  And then I will eat the product of their eating.  And then they will populate my body and help digest what I eat.  It is a peculiar symbiotic relationship that I hadn't thought about in quite that way before.  I help make them and they help make me.

Creamy Gazpacho

Eating well today.  Harvest time is great.  Yesterday I bought about $50 worth of vegetables from the farmer's market.  I could hardly lug them home!  Enough ingredients to make some great salads and my special plan: a creamy gazpacho.  I had never made a gazpacho before but inspired by my weekly Cook's Illustrated email I gave it a go.  The recipe was pretty easy and just involved a lot of chopping which I suppose is expected.  The kicker is that you can't eat any before it "rests" overnight to develop flavours.  Well, this is the next day and the soup is fabfabfabulous.    Here is a picture of it, garnished with basil and chopped onions, pepper, cucumber, and tomato.