Something Yummy: Red Beet Eggs & Whole Wheat Bread

There is a wonderful farm stand* near us that opened up a few months ago (*Carries much more than what the individual farm produces.  Additionally carries local cheeses, bread, frozen ravioli, jam, soup mixes, and more).  We have been getting much of our produce and a few goodies from here.  The owner, Pete, is always friendly and happy to chat.  Once when we were buying beets he told us of one of his favorite foods - red beet eggs.  He used to drive through Pennsylvania regularly and this is evidently something that is not rare to find in Amish country.  It involves pickling beets and hard boiled eggs together.

We tried this a few weeks ago and ate them all before taking a picture, so I guess you could say that they came out well.  I went to make them again, wanted to tweak the recipe, and also used canned beets just to be quicker and less messy.

Red Beet Eggs

In a small sauce pan combine: juice from one can of beets (if using fresh, save about 1.5C of beet cooking liquid), 1C cider vinegar, 3T sugar, cinnamon stick (optional but yummy), 6 cloves (optional but yummy).  Heat to dissolve the sugar  and bring out the flavors of the cloves and cinnamon, and then let cool (don't want to overcook the eggs!).

In a large jar or glass bowl (will stain plastic) add: six to eight peeled hard boiled eggs, one can of beets (or a handful of prepared and sliced fresh beets), and some thinly sliced onion or shallots (optional).  Pour the prepared liquid over the eggs, beets, and onion.  The liquid should cover everything, if not, add a little bit of water (not more that 1/2 cup or it will dilute flavor, add more vinegar if needed).

Let the ingredients sit in the pickling liquid for at least a day, but preferably two or three to increase saturation of flavor and color.  Sprinkle a little salt on eggs when ready to eat.

Whole Wheat Bread

Confession time.  I don't really like the recipe I used for this bread.  It has a lot of promise, but the directions were super wrong.  I ended up adding much more flour than was called for, as the original recipe just made yeasty paper mache.  Anyway, it makes a killer sandwich with horseradish hummus, tomato, avocado, and munster cheese.  Nonetheless, the smell of fresh baking bread is one of the best things on a cold and dreary day winter-like day.  

Oh What the Heck...

This drink evidently sponsored by Trader Joe's

Laura is gone for the evening and this is how I like to party. Many people know how I feel about juice (answer: love it) and smoothies can be quantified by this equation: smoothy≥juice.  Because of ingredients on hand, my smoothy of the week has consisted of: milk, plain yoghurt, frozen raspberries, one banana, capful of vanilla, and a splash of maple syrup.

All together now!

Delicious!  If I prepared this for Herman Cain I bet he couldn't keep his hands off of it (allegedly).  

Something Yummy: Potato Pancakes w/ Eggplant Béchamel

Our DVR is filled to the brim with episodes of Chopped.  If you aren't familiar with it, it is a cooking competition/elimination show on the Food Network where contestants are given baskets with totally random ingredients.  For example—make an appetizer using watermelon, canned sardines, pepper jack cheese, and zucchini in 20 minutes (Season 1 Episode 5).  After watching so many episodes, I stop and think "there is definitely something I can make here" every time I walk into the kitchen.

In my pantry I had: a tupperware of leftover potato dumpling dough, 3 carrots, 1 eggplant, and milk.  I wanted to have a mixture of flavors, textures, and colors.  I first planned on making a spicy potato pancake for the base of the dish.

The pancakes were made up of shredded potato, onion, salt, red pepper flakes and black pepper and were held together with some egg and flour.  I wanted to get them just cooked through with a nice crisp on both sides.


Then I decided on some type of light cream sauce.  Looking at the eggplant, I thought of moussaka with a nice creamy béchamel sauce.  I figured why not combine the two?


I heated a little oil, whisked in some flour, slowly added milk to the desired consistently, and added salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

I grilled the eggplant with just a little salt.  When the eggplant softened it was added to the food processor along with the béchamel sauce (I also added a spoonful of tahini to bring out some of the earthiness of the eggplant).


Next, I wanted to add a little crunch to the meal with the carrots.  I cooked them just briefly in some butter, garlic salt, and dill.  Potatoes, carrots, and a creamy sauce?  I'll eat it.

Carrots, potato pancakes cooking, sauce, and pancake mixture to be fried

I stacked the potato pancakes, sauce, carrots and repeated.  I really think the Chopped judges would have enjoyed it—except maybe Geoffrey Zakarian, who really dislikes spiciness!