Borscht

My girls are having a snow day today. I love having them home and usually try to do something special for lunch when they're around to enjoy it. So I took this cold, blustery day as an opportunity to dig up the remainder of my winter garden and create our last home-grown meal of the year with it. Underneath the snow and straw I was thrilled to find several small beets, onions, a few carrots and one teeny bit of broccoli! We ate the broccoli as a chilly, crunchy little appetizer. The rest I cut up into thin strips along with part of a small red cabbage I had in the fridge and turned it into one of my favorite soups of all time: Russian borscht.

Some of my fondest memories of my late father-in-law Gordon, were the delicious homemade soups he used to create. I've wanted to try and replicate his borscht for a long time, but felt intimidated trying to use such odd ingredients in a soup. Beets? Cabbage? Lemon juice? How would it turn out??? I'm so glad I finally overcame my trepidation. It turned out amazing! The girlies loved it and the flavor took me right back in time. If you love beets and you love warm, rich, delicious and very simple soup, you should so give this a try.

Borscht
thinly slice:

• 4-5 small beets
• 1 medium onion
• 1/2 cabbage (green or red)
• 1-2 carrots

Add beef or chicken stock and cook on the stove until broth is dark, rich red and veggies are tender.
Add 3-4 tablespoons of lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste
Garnish with sour cream and serve

I think Gordon would be proud.

Polish Pizza

Recycled food. Doesn't sound all that appealing does it? Who is willing to admit they like leftovers? With the advent of the microwave, leftovers are a breeze right? Just put the leftovers in a dish and when you want to eat them again, pop them into the magic box and push a button. Voila! A magically delicious meal! Unfortunately, it doesn't usually work that way. No matter what the commercials for processed frozen microwaveable meals say... nuked food doesn't taste that good. I used to throw away so many containers of leftover food, just because the thought of it re-heated in the microwave was so unappealing.

A couple years ago our family embarked on an adventure in home cuisine. We got rid of the microwave and bought a toaster oven instead. We put the magic box in the basement for a while, scared to let it go completely, lest we miss it and wish we could zap something. Not once have we longed for the quick and uneven reheat, the strange taste to our leftovers or the scary (it might explode...) hot water. I got a tea kettle and it warms up water just as quickly, thank you very much. But, what's better is the amazing fact that leftovers re-done with heat can actually taste really, really good. When you reheat something on a stove you can add stuff to it. Stir it around a little. Make it look and taste like freshly prepared food again. Leftover pizza in the toaster oven is soooo good we actually enjoy leftover pizza more than when it's fresh!

I love to re-work and re-use leftover food. It tickles my thrifty bone when I can create a meal from leftovers that is as good or better than the original meal. When I make dinner, I plan for the leftovers and half the fun is figuring out what I'm going to do with them. Roasted chicken dinner is followed by chicken soup, chicken and biscuits or chicken enchiladas. Pork chops become pork fried rice or pulled pork sandwiches. Leftover rice becomes rice pudding. Leftover noodles are baked into savory or sweet kugel. Leftover pizza dough becomes empanadas, cinnamon rolls, or lunch pizzas like this one:

Polish Pizza
I used a ball of leftover pizza dough, rolled out and spread onto an oiled pan and topped with:

• 2 tbs Dijon mustard (any spicy mustard will do - horseradish might be nice...)
• leftover roasted vegetables (from our chicken dinner last weekend. There were potatoes, carrots and onions with garlic and herbs.)
• one leftover tofurky kielbasa sausage (any sausage will do, just slice it up!)
• sauerkraut
• mozzarella cheese (Swiss might also be yummy)

Bake at 375 for 20 minutes and enjoy your recycled food.