Beet Trial

A Spanish-style tapas restaurant has recently opened in the neighborhood, and, for reasons I don't fully understand, been named Three Drunken Goats. Is there some significance to three goats in Spanish literature or culture? And why are the goats inebriated?

Maybe the restaurant's name is just a quirky marketing thing, but no matter. Although the owners are charging too much for a glass of wine, the food is well prepared and arrives on smallish plates, which are accompanied by appropriately smallish prices. As Dennis and I have reached the age at which unwanted weight affixes to our frames by merely inhaling good food, we need small portions in order to stay fit. So the other night, we visited the goat place and ordered a salmon dish and a salad with yellow beets, arugula, and, yes, goat cheese.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I am no beet eater. But I've been feeling like branching out lately. Also, I have to keep up with my husband, who, after a life-long aversion to mushrooms, recently tucked his fork into my order of porcini pasta. Eyes wide with amazement, he instantly regretted all of the fungi he had passed up, and, making up for lost time, has since asked me to prepare rissoto with porcinis at every opportunity.

So you can understand why I was hopeful about tasting the beets. Maybe a little too hopeful. Sadly, my reaction fell decidedly short of Dennis's porcini nirvana. Not that I want to disparage those simple yellow beets, but I found them underwhelming, just harmless roots that served as a foil to the much sassier arugula that accompanied them.

So, I'm following the lead of my President, who apparently asked Michele to skip the beet crop in the new White House garden. No reason to devote limited square footage to raising beets at my house either. Besides, I have to arm-wrestle Dennis for every inch of planting space. Although he has taken full advantage of the new raised beds we installed for his tomatoes, he still tries to sneak a tomato plant into every spare corner. At this point, he has 23 tomato plants in place and is angling for more, but I'm holding firm.

Aside from the tomatoes, we've installed some cucumbers, a yellow squash, and a few red and yellow bell peppers to accompany the perennial herbs and concord grapes. Happily, the strawberries are holding their own against the pests. So all is well. Only one little barren patch remains, which might be ideal for a melon of some sort. Time for me to research the needs of honeydews, cantaloupes, watermelons, and the rest of the melon cousins. I'll keep you posted.