OmegaMom

When I was growing up, one of the things that I learned to look forwards to during the summer was when OmegaGranny would buy a whole bunch of beets and beet greens, cook them up, and serve plain with butter.

Mmmmmm.

Now, probably most of you are going, “Eh?  Beets?” and thinking of that ghastly monstrosity perpetrated upon humanity called “pickled beets”.  I can handle a slice or two of pickled beets at best.  But, believe me, beets and greens are just plain good.

When OmegaDad and I were newly together, on one shopping expedition I saw a nice display of bunches of beets, and demanded he purchase and cook same.  His response was, “Eh?  Beets?”, and he was, indeed, thinking of pickled beets, which had been his only exposure to the plant before meeting me.  So we bought them, took them home, and I prepared them the proper way:  Boiling the beet roots for an hour, peeling them, chopping into small cubes, setting aside, washing the greens and slicing them, then tossing them into a tiny bit of boiling water for all of two or three minutes, draining the greens, then mixing them with the cubed beet roots and serving with butter.

He saw the light.  Sort of.  Beets are still not his most favorite of fresh veggies, but since he knows I looooove beets, he keeps an eye out.

OmegaDad requested, earlier this week, that I email him and remind him to put the Farmers Market into his calendar so he would remember that it’s open on Fridays only a couple of blocks from his office.  Since today was sunny and beautiful (YES!  It was up to 70F today!  ::OmegaMom pumps her fist in a victory move:: ) and since he was oh-so-tired of dealing with the mess a coworker had made of his nice clean data in the database, he skipped out of work early, headed off to the market, and returned home with the lusciousness above.

And lusciousness it truly was.  The beets were sweet and crisp, the greens slightly tart and acidic, and the butter complemented it all.

The dotter?

OmegaMom beams in delight:  This child is my dotter!  Woot!

The dotter eyed the beets and greens dubiously when served.  But she is well aware that the rule in the house is “one or two bites of everything on your plate”, and since she has decided that her great dream is to become a chef, she has taken to being much more open to new and strange food items.  So she tasted the beets.

At first she carefully pulled the beet cubes out from the greens and ate only those (eagerly).  But I urged her to try the greens as well.

She wanted seconds.  Of a vegetable.  And when I told OmegaDad that I could eat a dinner of just beets served that way with biscuits, she said, enthusiastically, “A whole big plateful!  Yum, yum!”

(We are hoping that our veggie garden actually produces beets; we have two types growing.  The moose did not get the beet plants.  Oh!  Oh!  And our decimated broccoli?  That were shorn?  They are fighting back, and we now have baby broccoli florets growing!)

On the menu tomorrow are those beautiful fresh green beans.

(Kate, over at High Altitude Gardening, is trying to identify a flowering plant in her garden.  If you’ve got some gardening know-how, go take a look and see if you can help.)

There are a few culinary disasters in my past that still make me wince, like the time I made a birthday cake for my mom using baking powder instead of baking soda (or was it vice versa?).  Another time relates to biscuits.

The No Exit Cafe in Rogers Park was a semi-hippy/semi-Bohemian kind of place, where people played chess or Go while sitting around, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and listening to folksy acoustic music played by women with long curling hair parted in the middle and held back by tie-dyed scarves folded into headbands.  My cousin K. was very fond of the No Exit, and for a period made a point of hauling me there along with him and his latest girlfriend.  For some reason, that Thanksgiving I was not doing a family do, and K. invited me to join in a community Thanksgiving meal at the No Exit.

In my innocence, I figured that I’d bring biscuits, because, well, hey:  biscuits.  Plain.  Simple.  Easy.  Right?

The cooks in my audience are howling with laughter now.

Of course, it turns out that biscuits–plain, simple, easy biscuits–are distressingly easy to make badly.  There are females in many families who are spoken of by descendents in reverential whispers when it comes to biscuits, because they know The Biscuit Secret. 

I did not know The Biscuit Secret:  my contribution to the feast was a bowl full of beautiful golden hockey pucks:  hard, rocky, flavorless.

Sigh.

That was enough to make me swear off making biscuits forever.

Perhaps I have learned by this time to never take something I’ve made for the first time to a potluck or gathering…

A few years ago, OmegaDad announced to me that he was on a quest to learn to make biscuits.  I wished him well, but was dubious.  His first batch was very similar to my original batch.  But he persevered, making an occasional biscuit batch now and then.

Tonight we had “breakfast for dinner”.  Bacon, scrambled eggs, biscuits, butter, apricot preserves.  Notably not a “healthy” dinner; I could feel my arteries slamming shut as I chowed down. 

The bacon was perfectly crispy, falling into bite-sized pieces with the merest crunch of one’s teeth.

The scrambled eggs–which are one of the things I do cook very well–were light and fluffy and gently seasoned with Italian seasoning.

And the biscuits–ahhhh, the biscuits.

Each biscuit had, on one side, a dainty little split beginning.  I would insert a fork at the split, and the biscuit would fall open like a flower, with a faint puff of steam rising into the air.  A little pat of butter, and then a tablespoon of apricot preserves, and I would open my mouth to a little bite of heaven.

OmegaDad’s biscuits, these days, are a piece of culinary artwork.  Delicate, fluffy, delicious, they are meltingly wonderful, and I can’t stop at one.  They are comfort food at its peak, and I hope that the dotter will be able to pass on to her children and grandchildren that she learned how to make biscuits from her father, who had the Best Biscuits Ever.