Covid Cafe: Tomorrow's Meatballs and Raw Beet Salad

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Cherry tomatoes

Good day to you, chefs. Ground lamb (grown on grass down the road) is a favorite of ours. I was going to make the meatballs in the video below this morning, but forgot to defrost the lamb overnight. So...tomorrow!

 

Spicy Broiled Lamb Meatballs

by MyBodyMyKitchen 

(click here for more)

Last week’s CSA box included a just-pulled bundle of beets. We'll bake the greens with salt and olive oil for chips tonight, but I needed a fresh idea for the beets themselves.  I stumbled on this Mark Bittman recipe for Raw Beet Salad, which is yet another plan for later today/tomorrow. We’ll report back.

I got as far as washing them

INGREDIENTS

1/2 pounds beets, preferably small
2 large shallots
1/2 pound fennel
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard, or to taste (optional)
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 sprig fresh tarragon, minced (optional)
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley leaves

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Peel the beets and the shallot. Combine them in a food processor fitted with the metal blade and pulse care- fully until the beets are shredded; do not purée. (Or grate the beets by hand and mince the shallots; combine.) Scrape into a bowl.

2. Shave the fennel very thinly, and add it to the bowl with the beets. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, then add the mustard (if you’re using it), oil, and lemon juice and toss. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Toss in the herbs and serve.

Speaking of beets, Chris and Lisa pulled one of their Badger Flame Beets from Row 7, sliced it thin, and ate its delicious sweetness raw. (Sadly, the bunnies enjoyed mine at the fetal stage.)

 Here's the full-grown Badger Flame Beet

(via Row 7)

Poetry

Singularity

Marissa Davis

^{after Marie Howe}

              in the wordless beginning

iguana & myrrh

magma & reef          ghost moth

& the cordyceps tickling its nerves

& cedar & archipelago & anemone

dodo bird & cardinal waiting for its red

ocean salt & crude oil         now black

muck now most naïve fumbling plankton

every egg clutched in the copycat soft

of me unwomaned unraced

unsexed          as the ecstatic prokaryote

that would rage my uncle’s blood

or the bacterium that will widow

your eldest daughter’s eldest son

my uncle, her son           our mammoth sun

& her uncountable siblings         & dust mite & peat

apatosaurus & nile river

& maple green & nude & chill-blushed &

yeasty keratined bug-gutted i & you

spleen & femur seven-year refreshed

seven-year shedding & taking & being this dust

& my children & your children

& their children & the children

of the black bears & gladiolus & pink florida grapefruit

here not allied but the same        perpetual breath

held fast to each other as each other’s own skin

cold-dormant & rotting & birthing & being born

in the olympus           of the smallest

possible once before once

 

Music

Meantime, here's Plas Johnson's

The Blues

(music to cook by)