This is week two of the 5th Annual Dark Days Challenge, a 4 1/2 month pledge by participants to eat one SOLE meal a week: a meal as Sustainable, Organic, Local and Ethical as possible.  Weekly participant recaps are being rounded up by the good people at Not Dabbling in Normal.

This week, we’ve been overrun with beet greens.  They’re good in a salad and as wraps — two things that my daughter has no interest in these days.

Instead, I’ve been using them in items Nina is guaranteed to sample: pesto and smoothies.

We’ve had enough cold nights that these leaves are even sweeter than usual, with a chard-like flavor and leaves as tender as micro greens.

With a head of garlic from the garden, a small glug of best-quality olive oil, Maldon sea salt and fresh cracked pepper, this pesto is ready before your pasta is finished boiling.

To give this pesto a hint of creaminess, cut back on the oil and add a tablespoon or two of your pasta water, just before draining.  All of that starch works wonders for texture.

Breakfast smoothie: this one contained a handful of berries frozen at their summer peak, green (not purple) beet leaves, alt milk and a dash of local maple syrup we picked up during our annual summer trip to the Soo.

And for the grownups of the house: beautiful beets, simply roasted.

Oh, boo!  I don’t have an answer for this at all!  I have well over a thousand books just of my own in our very culled-down married library, and couldn’t begin to catalogue the books I’ve read but don’t own.

I’m going to make up a few other ‘favourites’ questions instead:

Which children’s book is your favorite to read aloud?  A Bedtime for Bear.

Which book has the best illustrations?  It’s a tie between Slightly Invisible and The Lion & the Mouse (as illustrated by Jerry Pinkey)

Favourite sad children’s book (even children benefit from a good cry every now and again)?  City Dog, Country Frog

Favourite character in a children’s book?  Olivia

Favourite reference book?  BakeWise

Favourite cookbook?  Hearty Vegan Meals for Monster Appetites

Favourite knitting book?  Last Minute Knitted Gifts

Favourite book for discussion?  The 25^th Hour

And that about does it for this book meme.  Thanks to those of you who played along in the comments section and/or on your own sites!

Not sure I have an answer for this, but the books I’m always surprised to hear someone didn’t like are: The Corrections, The 25^th Hour, American Pastoral, American Psycho, A Simple Plan

Slapboxing with Jesus

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Bitter is the New Black

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Friday

Seven Types of Ambiguity

From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

Too Much Happiness

A Wrinkle in Time

The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell

So obviously, I’m not going to tell you what was so surprising to me at the end of this book!  But I’ll be rereading it again soon, I hope.

Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Okay, so this book didn’t exactly change my opinion about anything; he was pretty much preaching to choir.  I went vegan as a teenager strictly for health reasons, I did my capstone thesis on the environmental impact of veganism, and I made the ethical/compassionate leap years ago.  But something I rarely gave much thought to before reading this book was one’s relationship to food.  My mother and grandmother, the two people who cooked most for my immediate family when I was growing up, were not the greatest of cooks.  I always took it for granted that it was easy for me to shun meat, eggs and dairy because while growing up, they were rarely served in any remotely palatable form.  This book, however, opened my mind to the fact that a person’s personal history with food plays a huge role in their life.

And more importantly, it helped me realize that the food experiences I’m creating with my daughter will have just as lasting an impression on her as she grows up.

Denise Lambert, from The Corrections

The relationship between Denise and her mother Enid perfectly echoes the relationship between me and my own mother.  Some mothers and daughters just don’t get along, and I spent the first half of my life locking horns with her.  Our inability to see eye to eye on pretty much everything was so over the top it was comical.  Thank goodness for books like this that let me take a step back and just laugh at the whole mess.

I’m generally a glass half full kind of person, and my mother is a Debbie Downer to the power of infinity.  The Corrections gives me a peek at the mess of a mother-daughter relationship we’ve managed to sidestep.  And when I need to let off a little steam in her direction, instead of picking up the phone, I pick up this book and let it out vicariously through Denise.

Everything Matters! by Ron Currie Jr.

My friend Laura recommended I read this when it first came out, and it was so good that in the time I had it out from the library I read it, Mar read it, and then I read it a second time.

The protagonist of this story, Junior Thibodeau, finds out in utero that when he is 36 years, 168 days, fourteen hours and twenty-three seconds old, the earth will be annihilated by a comet.  Smashed to smithereens in a big ball of fire.  Ka-POW.

The rest of the story is about Junior deciding what to do with this information.  Cut ties from everyone you know and not care about anyone or anything?  Embrace your cosmic doom?  Try to do something about it?  Let this knowledge drive you insane?

Oh, it’s a fun ride, this book.  Not all doom and gloom at all, if that’s what you’re thinking.  I mean, take a look at the author – he’s all bald head and ear-to-ear grin; it looks like he just stepped out of a yoga retreat.  Could someone like this write a depressing book about the coming apocalypse?

Quote from the book:

Everything matters not in spite of the end of you and all that you love, but because of it. Everything is all you’ve got—your wife’s lips, your daughter’s eyes, your brother’s heart, your father’s bones and your own grief—and after Everything is nothing. So you were wise to welcome Everything, the good and the bad alike, and cling to it all.

If that doesn’t convince you, I don’t know what will.

This week kicks off the 5th Annual Dark Days Challenge, a 4 1/2 month pledge by participants to eat one SOLE meal a week: a meal as Sustainable, Organic, Local and Ethical as possible.  Weekly participant recaps are being rounded up by the good people at Not Dabbling in Normal.  There is still time to sign up, here.

At my house this week, it’s been all about surviving the frost.

Not us, obviously.  We hail from Chicago.  We’re hardy stock.  (Remind me I said that when I start whining about the cold come February.)

A few weeks back we started getting the occasional kiss of overnight frost.  This being the South, however, meant that afternoon temps were still hitting the 70s more days than not, and our plants seemed okay with that.  More than okay, even – they continued to flower and fruit.  Our larger (and not even a year old) strawberry patch looked so vigorous that it was like something out of Little Shop of Horrors.

We had strawberries for breakfast on Thanksgiving.

And my peppers – each and every one of those 34 plants had a mind of its own.  As the summer wound down, I would pull up plants that had clearly stopped producing.  But as their numbers dwindled, the remaining stragglers seemed to rally, and suddenly we were facing a third flush of peppers.  In October.  It was capsicum chaos.

I ran my dehydrator around the clock for nearly a week, drying tray after tray after tray of habaneros and chilis.  The bigger peppers were roasted and preserved in oil or the freezer, depending on where I had the most room on any given day.  A couple even made it into the crisper, the last of which I used up this week.

And of course, we have plenty of food coming in that is right on schedule for the shorter days of autumn and winter.  Sweet potatoes. Year-round herbs. Shitakes. Brussels sprouts.

Ever eat Brussels sprouts for dessert?  When roasted to perfection, they taste like popcorn.

I have to limit this to one?  I guess I’ll go with the one that’s been gathering dust in queue the longest: Stieg Larsson’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (or whichever book it is that kicks off the trilogy).

I’ve put this book off so long that even my mother-in-law has read it.  I just need to be in the right mood, and it hasn’t happened yet.