Beet Stems Part Deux

At the risk of boring all 8 of my readers out there I will blog yet again about beet stems. You can't stop me. It's my blog and I'll bore if I want to, bore if I want to.

So my loving wife is out of town on business and I've been left to my own devices. Very dangerous. So what do I do while the cat's away you ask? I think of new and creative ways to pair seasonal ingredients sourced from my local farm and try to get my kids to actually eat them. I am so out of control! Did you think I was going to say throw a kegger or something?  I'm nearly 40 with 2 little kids. I think not.

So tonight was a success. Pictured above we have the aforementioned beet stems - stir frying in some olive oil at high heat with fresh local garlic, not local salt, not local pepper and not local orange juice. I live in Connecticut people - cut me some slack. I would so rock the kitchen if I lived in an area with a longer growing season. Anyway, once we let that sizzle for a while we added it to some sectioned fresh orange and red onion. Garnish with a sprig of local purple basil and viola!

Would your 7 year-old eat that? Mine did. Take that "Deceptively Delicious" cookbook writer woman who is or used to be married to Jerry Seinfeld. I don't deceive my kids when it comes to cooking like she recommends in her stupid book - I include them in the process - they see where the food comes from, how we prepare it - and it gets them interested in tasting it. What I don't have to do is try to trick my kids into eating a vegetable or a fruit. Do I really have to fashion eggplant into meatballs so that they'll eat something good? My Mother did that with me but I was a pain in the ass. I don't blame her for duping me. I ate butter sandwiches and apples almost exclusively until I was 16. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

It helped that I was gullible and trusted my Mother implicitly. That bond of trust was broken once I uncovered the truth. It took me an embarrassing number of years but eventually I realized that there was a reason why my Mother's meatballs tasted like no other - it wasn't that she was a great cook (which she is) it was because she was totally screwing with me! I'm glad she did. The challenging dishes she put in front of me as a kid opened me up to a whole beautiful world of cuisine that I'm just beginning to discover.