Beet soup!

Beets are like nature's delicious purple candy. And this soup, from Celia Brooks Brown's wonderful Vegetarian Party Food, is one of my favorites; I found myself wanting to type it up today, twice, but I realized that I'd made so many tweaks to Americanize it that I might as well rewrite it from scratch. I also roast, instead of boil, the beets, because roasted beets are wonderful; sipping this soup is like drinking the undiluted ichor of Zeus.

I particularly like this recipe because it's elegant enough for entertaining, but ridiculously simple to make. You can keep it warm in a slow cooker with fairly good results while you make the rest of your holiday dishes. If making for company, I recommend shredding the beets with a food processor before the immersion blending step to get a completely smooth texture; otherwise, you can save time by chopping the beets into large pieces.

Coconut-Beet Soup

Ingredients

1 lb fresh beets

3 cups vegetable stock

1 can coconut milk

4 garlic cloves, peeled and roughly chopped

1 t. ground cumin

zest of one lemon, grated

juice from 1/2 lemon

Directions

1. Heat oven to 375 F; wrap beets in foil, put on a pan, and roast them for about 75 minutes. You should be able to stick a fork into the middle of the largest beet easily; if not, keep roasting.

2. Towards the end of the beet roasting time, heat vegetable stock to boiling in a medium stockpot. Add coconut milk and stir together.

2. When the beets are cool enough to handle, rub the skins under cold water to peel (this should be easy to do with just your hands; wear gloves if you don't want to look like you've been slaughtering innocents). Coarsely chop or grate beets, then throw them into the stockpot.

3. Add garlic, cumin, and lemon zest to the beet mixture. Using an immersion blender, puree until smooth. Simmer for 10 minutes.

4. Taste to adjust seasonings (you'll probably need at least a teaspoon of salt) and add lemon juice right before serving. Serve with toasted pita wedges.

Oktoberfest: Potato Soup

Absolutely everyone I know is sick right now. Rest assured: you are in snot-dripping, sneezy agony. Over the last week I've made butternut squash soup, chickenless noodle soup, and, to mix things up from my usual routine, Bavarian Potato Soup. Nothing could be simpler! If you have a slow cooker, it can be a good alternative for making just about any type of soup. Usually, it takes about 8 hours on low or 3-4 hours on high in place of the normal cooking time for soups.

Bavarian Potato Soup

Ingredients

2 onions

3 T olive oil

1 lb potatoes

1 carrot

3 ribs celery

1 small leek

1 clove garlic

6 cups vegetable stock

1/2 t. dried marjoram

1/2 t. dried thyme

1 t. liquid smoke

salt

freshly ground pepper

freshly ground nutmeg

handful of parsley

Directions

1. Peel and dice the onions.

2. Heat the oil on medium and saute the onions until golden, about 10 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, peel the potatoes, carrot, and garlic, and dice these along with the celery. When the onion has cooked, at the remaining vegetables and saute them together briefly.

4. Add the broth and seasonings, mixing in salt, pepper, and nutmeg to taste. Bring the mixture to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for 20 minutes.

5. Immersion-blend soup and check seasonings. Chop and add the parsley.

6. EAT

Oktoberfest: Griebenschmalz

In late September and early October, when the weather has just turned cold and it's apple picking season and the cold, light witbiers of summer give way to the heartier fall bocks and Märzens, is there anything more delicious than German food?

There is not.

And once you've picked those eighteen pounds of apples, you need to find something to cook with them. That's where Apfelgriebenschmalz comes in. A simple spread, traditionally made with lard but made deliciously vegan, to put on your toasted rye bread while you drink your favorite fall beer and cheer for Devin Hester.

Apfelgriebenschmalz

Ingredients

3 sticks Earth Balance nonhydrogenated vegan margarine

1 large onion

1 large clove garlic

1 large apple (use something flavorful, tart, and good)

1 T dried marjoram

3 peppercorns

1 bay leaf

1/4 t. liquid smoke

1/4 t. salt

Directions

1. Melt the Earth Balance in a small saucepan on medium heat.

2. Finely dice the onion, mince the garlic, and thinly slice the apple, then chop into smallish matchsticks.

3. Add these to the margarine along with seasonings. Allow the mixture to simmer until the onions are golden, about 15 minutes

.

4. Remove the bay leaf and pour the mixture into ramekins (I had enough to fill 3 8-ounce ones). Refrigerate until the margarine is firm again.

5. Spread the mixture on lightly toasted rye bread and enjoy!

What I Found in my Box (electronics edition)

After seeing the Ithacka box of junk challenge, I was intrigued. Not intrigued enough to order one, but I filed the idea away as Something I Should Do. Naturally, when I was at American Science and Surplus during a trip to the Midwest last week, I couldn't help picking up one of these babies.

And so, I present: the Crazy Inventor's Mystery Box. It's a bit like joining a CSA for old electronics junk. It turns out, flying with one of these in your checked luggage is the TSA equivalent of wearing a kick-me sign:

Once home, I meticulously photographed and documented the contents of my box. I'll post more with any projects made from it, but here are some spoilers:

The logic probe is an accessible place to start, though most of the components in the box are analog. Also included were about 6 small polarizing filters. They look like the kind that come inside small b/w LCD electronics.

60 Watt AC motor, and a bunch of speaker wire. There's at least one other motor in the box. Other items: lots of coax and TV bits, speaker plugs, touch sensors (in Mindstorms parlance, anyway; most of us would say buttons and pedals), a small PCB-mounted LCD, a "privacy" switchplate, a rechargable battery, pneumatic parts, small screwdrivers, angled scissors, and (this is sort of my favorite because of the instant death factor) some chopped off power cords with the plug end included. Time to make projects!