Red Thumb, Red Thumb!

Beets are quite impressive vegetables. They really just insinuate and impose themselves on you when you are cooking with them. That magenta-ness just oozes into and splatters onto what seems to be every nook and cranny and you think "why do I put up with this headache, this neon mess?" But then you taste some of that delicious root (preferably with a nice bit of goat cheese) and it's sweetness, it's quirkiness somehow makes the stained skin and inescapably stained clothes worth it.
So last week I got some bunches of beets from the farmer's market (last of the year, I believe) and cooked up a beet and potato salad following the recipe from Moosewood's Low-Fat cookbook. I modified it some - used purple potatoes that made an interesting tonal variation and also steamed and chopped the greens and threw them in (inspired by Rob's delicious beet salad from the 4th). Real briefly, it's cooked beets mixed with cooked potatoes, some scallions, dressed with yogurt, cider vinegar, lemon juice and a smidge of horseradish (plus salt and pepper). Threw in a leftover yellow bell pepper for contrast (which got lost) and I didn't have any gherkins on hand so just used a little more vinegar and the aforementioned beet greens. A little goat cheese on top for color. It's yummy - what I imagine the product of an unholy alliance between a German potato salad and Borscht with just a smidge of the South thrown in. But it sure is a dangerous dish to eat when wearing white.
This weekend I made a Triple-Ginger bundt cake out of the Pie in the Sky cookbook - lots of ginger and crystallized ginger and powdered ginger and honey in the cake and the glaze. Mmmm. I decorated with some of those super-expensive candy bees from Williams-Sonoma since it was a cake for my roommate's family. I'm pretty happy with how that turned out - so far so good as far as my mile high baking adventures go. Made an apple cake last weekend out that was just a smidge gooey in the middle, but that might be due to the darkness of the baking pan.
Oh yes, on Friday I made dinner for some classmates: Tofu Curry with Cilantro Rice as well as some Curried Cider-Braised Pork Chops which was surprisingly good, even all the celery. It's pretty nice on a bed of romaine lettuce quite frankly. And Baking Illustrated's apple crumble which is also quite tasty even though I bought the wrong variety of apples to put in (Galas - too mushy). I miss apple picking this year, that's for sure.
After dinner, we caught The Darjeeling Limited at the Esquire. It was pretty good - the metaphors were not too in your face which I appreciated, but overall the movie was a little too...zen for me. Still like Royal Tenenbaums the best. But a good movie with interesting characters.
Oh one last food note - I got some chocolate linguine at the farmer's market last weekend. I am thinking of perhaps making it with a mole? Or perhaps a chocolate noodle kugel? The guy at the stand suggested making a cold noodle salad with some berries and some whipped cream. I am fascinated.