The beet goes on

I love me some beets. Not that canned shit, but real beets - like fresh from the garden beets.  In the past, my favorite form of these pretty (and healthy!) little gems was simply roasted and tossed with a really good balsamic vinegar and some blue cheese.  But alas my cheese eating days are gone, or at least postponed for a bit.  "NO CHEESE?!?" you ask, stunned.  I know, its a tragedy. But unfortunately when my shadow son was about 3 weeks old, I noticed he was getting a rash on his stomach and it was only getting worse - turns out he has excema.  His pediatrician suggested steriod cream as a solution, but my gut told me that this was only treating the symptom and we really needed to get to the root of the problem.  It didn't take much research (i.e. googling) to confirm my gut feeling and find out that excema can be caused by a dairy and/or gluten sensitivity, and this can even be the issue with a breastfed baby when the mother is eating dairy or gluten.  So of the two potential causes, I figured it was easier to drop dairy from my diet and see if it helped (gluten would have been way harder for me to drop completely - no graham crackers?!?).  Turns out the internet was right (as it often is), the poor guy was reacting to the dairy in my diet!   The good news is that his skin looks great now.  The bad news is that I miss cheese a lot.   Which brings me back to my beet issue...

In our share this week we received some gorgeous beets, complete with the greens (which are chock full of magnesium and other stuff that apparently matters).  So I turned to the internet once again and managed to find a recipe for a beet salad that not only was cheese-free, but also used the greens!  It turned out to be super refreshing and full of summer flavors, and it might just be my new go-to beet format.  Perfect for leftovers and a quick lunch during the work day. 

Beet Salad with Beet Greens and Oranges

Details can be found in the recipe linked above, but the short story is that I chopped the greens and set them aside, and roasted the beets whole.  I actually had 10-12 beets so I roasted them all and then set aside the extra beets for another meal, but I used the greens from all of them in this recipe.  The greens were cooked quickly in boiling water, then drained and sqeezed dry.  I tossed together the beets (wear an apron when peeling and cutting) and greens, then added the chopped segments of two oranges and about a quarter of a thinly sliced red onion (recipe calls for sweet, but sweet onions are not my fave).  The dressing was a simple olive oil, red wine vinegar number, with garlic and orange peel to keep it interesting (I added a generous pinch of salt to the dressing as well).  Toss it all together and you've got yourself a salad. 

I also reserved the fresh juice that leaked out of the oranges and used it for a marinade (with some soy sauce, garlic, sriracha and olive oil) for a simple grilled flank steak that played nicely with the salad (and quite frankly looked pretty darn good too).