Beet Salad and Stir Fry

Lunch and dinner today were both improvisations. Lunch used up some leftover mixed greens, and some roasted beets. I peeled and sliced the beets, and topped them with some crumbled blue cheese, some chopped Kalamata olives and some walnut pieces, and squeezed some lemon juice over them, then topped everything with some oil and vinegar dressing. The sweetness of the beets works very well with the lemon and blue cheese, and the saltiness of the olives. I sometimes use feta cheese for this and it works very well. If you've only had pickled beets, I'd recommend roasting your own for a real change - you just take off the greens and the root end, rinse the beet without peeling, and wrap in aluminum foil and bake in a 350 degree oven for as long as it takes - tiny beets may take an hour, big ones and hour and a half or even more - you want them to be easily pierced by a fork. When you're ready to use them, just peel.

Dinner was the ever-versatile stir fry. I like to try to achieve a mix of textures and colors - some hard vegetables (broccoli and carrot here, sometimes celeriac or kohlrabi), some cabbagy things (here cabbage, sometimes bok choy or kale or another green) and some onion and garlic. This one had some sliced sweet red pepper, which adds nice color and flavor. At the very end, I add some soy sauce and a drizzle of sesame oil. Served over bashmati or other rice, it's excellent. If you prep some of the vegetables ahead of time (I always leave the onions and garlic to the last minute), the whole thing takes no more than a half hour.