Roasted Beets - Perfect!

Last night we had a pre-Thanksgiving family dinner. For this I sacrificed the last of my home-grown beets, and they were beautifully rosy and delicious at room temp with splashes of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and with rosemary and thyme strewn around.

I learned how to roast beets something like baked potatoes to avoid diluting their flavor in water and to concentrate the sugars. At first I would trim the beet greens to 2 inches, scrub the beets, dry them, and encase them individually in sealed foil packets. This worked very well. After the beets cooled, I could put on a pair of rubber gloves and just slip the beet skins off to reveal shiny smooth beets to use as dinner vegetables, slice into salads, etc. Later I felt guilty wasting so much foil, so I decided instead to rub them liberally with cooking oil, and put them in a covered casserole to bake. Even better - and greener, so to speak! Wish I had a picture, but you'll just have to imagine it.

Last night I watched Dances with Wolves again. I forgot how long it is - over 3 hours - but it was so interesting that I didn't notice the time at all. I'm working my way through the American Film Institute's 100 Greatest Films. This is #75 on the first version of the list.

I remember when it first came out in 1990 (20 years ago - good heavens!). It must have been around Thanksgiving when the sister who is almost exactly 6 years younger came to town, as she has, off and on (mostly on) for T-Day all these years. A good movie has been part of our tradition, and that year we picked Dances with Wolves. I have a mental picture of her in the movie theater parking lot as we walked in the dark back to our car. We had run out of superlatives for what we had just seen and were continuing in silence when my sister let out a genuine blood-curdling war whoop! It was the perfect "review."

She's coming to town again this Thanksgiving and I'll be adding this memory to my list of things to be grateful for.

H1N1 Inches Closer

Last week I finally got a seasonal flu shot, but I've decided to forgo the H1N1 shot since I'm not in a high-risk category. But I found out on Tuesday that the young husband of one of my co-workers came home with H1N1. His wife has moved in with her parents and stops off at home once a day to leave food and check on him. She says he started with a "terrific" headache and then a high fever. Today he is cleaning things with Lysol and talking about going back to work.

I used to think that we public librarians were almost immune to communicable diseases - like teachers and young moms who get exposed to everything. But in library newsletters this week, there was the ominous news that a "healthy" manager of an Omaha public library died of this flu. There's nothing like taking a library card from a person who is hacking and sniffling at the reference desk. We now keep hand sanitizers and sanitizing wipes right on the desk, but I doubt they do any good against airborne viruses. I may decide to wear a mask!

Author Treats from the New York Public Library

I've heard that New York City has a wonderful library, so I guess their online version can't help but be good, too. I just found their link to Live from the NYPL with audio and/or video versions of important "conversations" - including one with Margaret Atwood, the author of a book I just started and am relishing! She spoke with another well-known author and historian, Thomas Cahill, there in December 2006.

Upcoming this week is a conversation with Barbara Kingsolver, another of my favorites. And past programs include ones with Queen Noor, Spike Lee, Salman Rushdie, Jeffrey Eugenides, and on and on!

Wisconsin Travelers' Delights

Last weekend we drove through Wisconsin to get to Minneapolis. We were out of honey and made plans to stop near Janesville to pick up a new supply at Orlovsky Apiaries. When we called ahead to place our order, we were told that the bees had not had a good year, so we were going to be limited to 3 gallons. Rats.

I did some research on the Wisconsin Honey Producers Assn. site to see who was close to the Interstate AND had an e-mail address. The first one to get back to me was a guy in Tomah, home of the Warrens Cranberry Fest each September, who has hives in the cranberry bogs around there, so - cranberry honey! It's very thick and a little darker than other honeys. He told us it's as sweet as any other honey, but has a slight "tang" (I can't tell, so far). A third of our new supply is gone now, as we gave away some to relatives. My mother wants some, too, but she'll have to be content with a 2 oz sample that will pass airline security.

In Tomah, we got an additional 20 lbs. of the cranberry honey, 2 cheap bags of fresh cranberries, and a big pumpkin for Halloween carving. Lastly, we stopped at our all-time favorite Wisconsin eatery, Norske Nook, where the pies are huge and the crusts taste like homemade. We have been stopping there for years, and this time we got a banana cream (no refrigeration needed in October!) and a peach praline to go with a stuffed shells dinner with family in Coon Rapids that night. Excellent!

We always buy the pies in the metal pie pans which require a $7 deposit. With an accumulation of a stamp on their business card for each pie you buy, you get a freebie with 7 stamps. Two pie pans to return, plus the 7 stamps, means we got 2 more pies for practically nothing - yay!

How to Peel a Banana

I have always peeled bananas by pulling off the "handle" at the stem end. Imagine my surprise when I found out there's a better way! I was idly browsing through Xtreme English when I came across the odd link, Hilarious, on her 10/20/09 post. I don't know what Xtreme English found that was hilarious there, but I did find a YouTube of the correct way to peel a banana (monkey style). When I checked back there today, I couldn't find it again, but it's easy to find stuff on YouTube, luckily.

I happened to have some bananas at home and found out that this actually works very well - IF the bananas are not too soft. After that, the end doesn't squish so readily. I did a quick survey of the people at work the next day and found out that hardly anyone knows how to do it this way. Who knew? Thanks, Xtreme English and Belgian Waffle!

I Am Introduced to J.A. Jance

J.A. Jance, prolific mystery writer, is coming to my library in December. She's been writing mysteries for more than 20 years, but I haven't read any of them yet. Starting with a series about J.P. Beaumont, a recovering alcoholic and retired Seattle detective, she then went on to write another series about Joanna Brady, single mother and rural Arizona sheriff. My office partner is one of her fans and was excited to find out that Jance has combined these two series by putting Brady and Beaumont in the same book. And she has started a third series about Ali Reynolds, an over-the-hill tv newscaster with a marriage on the rocks who goes back to her small Arizona hometown to figure out what to do next, blogging all the way.

I've set myself a project to read at least the first book in each series before that author shows up here. Only the first book for the Ali Reynolds' series was available at the time, so I'm starting with that one. Now that I've spent a little time in urban Arizona, it will be fun to read about the rural part.