Pickled Beets: SageSpoonLiving Recipe

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Sometimes you just have a near 3 pound beet on your hands, and you need to do something with it.  You know? (Just in case you don’t believe me here is proof:)   This baby sat in my fridge for nearly a month before I decided to take him (her?) out for a nice roast.  I generally always roast my beets before I even have a plan for them and this gorgeous hunk (babe?) was wrapped in foil and in the oven before I thought too much about it. Sometimes, for the sake of moving food along (you know the vegetables that linger in your fridge for a while with no purpose in life?), I will apply a simple cooking technique to them so as to force my eating of them.  And I love beets!  So don’t get me wrong when I say “force”… ….the point is that I wasn’t … Continue reading →

Buffalo for the Broken Food Chain

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For me, the bison, or the American buffalo, provokes the kind of passion that is at the very core of my love for food that truly satisfies and nourishes.  It is food to swoon over. The bison represents that which matters and that which I hold most dear. It is a sacred meat. It all began in book club when I read Buffalo for the Broken Heart by Dan O’Brien.  A bison rancher in South Dakota, Dan is also an ecologist who eloquently points out the vast differences between bison, evolved for about 120,000 years in their native environment, and cattle, transplanted onto it about a century ago by Europeans after most of the sixty million buffalo were slaughtered.  Looking for a reason to be, and a way to live out his passion for the biodiversity of the northern great plains, Dan turned to buffalo ranching, and his story is both inspiring … Continue reading →

When Anxiety Hits: 5 Soothing Foods to Light a Candle Next To …

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…… a slightly misleading post-title if there ever was one.  Not misleading per se – just leaving out a huge part of the “discussion”. But then I couldn’t very well have put diarrhea and anxiety right there in the heading for all to see, could I?  Or could I?…. Read on dear reader, read on.  We’ll eventually get to the soothing foods. When anxiety hits, all kinds of psychological and medical symptoms can show up, some more severe than others, depending on the level of anxiety and the way in which it is, um, manifested in your body. In this post I’d like to address one of the symptoms that my body (and millions of other bodies on this planet) suffers, and a symptom that is a clear sign of anxiety and stress.  This particular of symptoms being – ah, well – let’s just say it together folks:  diarrhea.  There. … Continue reading →

The Pragmatic Magic of the Potluck

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A few evenings ago I again bore witness to the phenomenon of the potluck, that ubiquitous of occasions in our part of the country, often associated with church basements or club-like functions. It was impressed upon me, as it is each and every time I attend one of these events, that a potluck that occurs as it was meant to occur – with minimal planning – always works out.  Always. I have no photos to share for this post.  I was too busy completely enjoying myself…. On this particular evening four of us were getting together.  Four you say?  Isn’t that a bit of a risky move?  How do you know you won’t all bring dessert?  And to make things even more interesting, two of the four were vegetarians.  For those of us who are planners, who need to know that all bases are covered, who shudder at the thought … Continue reading →

Green Tomatoes and How Sometimes You Just Gotta Roll With It

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  It’s been a super crazy week.  I know people say that all the time but this week was truly overwhelming.  Everything converged and I felt like the phone was ringing, or I was answering emails, or I was trying to solve some (albeit relatively minor – let’s face it) problem, during all my spare moments between work, school, refinancing my mortgage, and working on my website – not to mention cooking, yoga, running, meditation, hanging with friends, and all the “me-time” activities I try to make a priority. Big Breath in.  And Exhale.  Big Smile.  Sheepish smile.  These aren’t really problems.  My life is good. Not just good. Pretty dang good.  I also had a big bowl of green tomatoes just sitting on the kitchen counter doing nothing and I’d been thinking about preparing something new with them for two weeks.  Everybody and his horse has been writing a … Continue reading →