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Arts and Health, Sisters is devoted to exploring creative problem solving and coping strategies in our world, especially the links between artistic expression and personal and spiritual growth. It is also dedicated to honoring the value and power of women.

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Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Curried spring vegetables

Curried Spring Vegetables

This combination of beets, potatoes and onions is light and warming, just like a spring day!

Makes 6 side dish servings, a meal for 2, or for me, 1 large serving and breakfast the next day.

Ingredients

-One bunch beets with greens attached
-Equal amount of potato, about 2-3 medium
-1 onion
-1 clove garlic
-about ½ t lime zest
-heaping T fresh ginger, diced or grated
-¼ t turmeric
-½ t curry powder
-¼ t cinnamon
-¼ t thyme
-dash ground nutmeg
-salt
-pepper
-about ¼ c olive oil

Step 1:  Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Step 2: While oven is warming up , wash beets and potatoes. Cut stalks off of beets. Retain the leafy greens for the “sauce”. Peel beets and potatoes if you wish, but it isn’t necessary. Cut off beetroots, chop into 1-2 inch chunks. Remove potato eyes if not peeled and chop the potatoes into chunks also. Peel onion and chop it also. Spread the chopped vegetables in a baking dish. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Coat with a T or two of olive oil. By now the oven should be hot, so go ahead and put the pan in the oven, middle rack.

Step 3: Let the vegetables roast. If you want, you may fuss over them and stir them once in a while, but mine do fine just roasting by themselves. Leave them in for 45 minutes, then check and see if the beets are tender. If they are, take the vegetables out of the oven, if not leave them in for another 10 minutes.

Step 4: While you are leaving the vegetables to roast, make the sauce.
Remove the stalks from the beet greens and wash the leaves well. Put in a medium saucepan with ⅓ c water. Put the saucepan, covered on the stove over medium heat. While that’s cooking go to the next step.

Peel and dice or press the clove of garlic into a small mixing bowl. Add the heaping T fresh grated or diced ginger, the lime zest, turmeric, curry powder, cinnamon, thyme and nutmeg. Stir well. Heat about 2 T olive oil in a small saucepan. Add the spice mix to the heated oil and stir while it cooks just for two to three minutes. With any luck your beet greens are nice and tender now. If they are done properly they will be very soft and you can cut them with a fork or table knife. I do this in the saucepan. Then add the beet greens and the pot liquor to the spices and stir well.

Put aside, as the vegetables are probably still roasting. Put your feet up or catch up on the dishes so you won’t have so much to do later.

Step 5: Once the vegetables are tender remove from the oven and put them in a serving bowl. If they want to stick to the baking dish a spatula should remove them pretty easily while they are hot. Just be careful not to touch the baking dish without a hot pad. Pour the spice mix over the roasted vegetables and mix. Serve immediately, or put in the fridge (covered of course) and have as a cold dish later.

Notes: This could be altered adjusted multiple ways. My inspiration was the wonderful spinach-potato curry dish, but I’m not supposed to eat spinach. Beets are in the same family as spinach, so I thought a potato beet curry would be good. I think the little bit of lime zest is what really makes this dish.

Thursday, February 5, 2015

Learning By Hand

I am making a hat for my son. It's styled after a hat he saw in an anime show. It is large and although the pattern is simple, it requires many feet of hand top stitching. If I had a fancy machine I could sew it up in a matter of minutes. Yet I feel I would lose something in the learning process.

When I stitch by hand I am in more intimate contact with the material. I know how stiff the interfacing is, I know or learn how much the material will stretch. Some of this I could learn if I was sewing by machine, but not as well. In addition I am learning more about sewing a straighter seam and come up with ideas to make sewing a straight seam by hand easier. And I have time to think.

Learning is something difficult and it takes as much of all of me as I can handle to do it. So when I am learning, I prefer to learn by hand. And here is an article about some studies which confirm my prejudice. It helps me understand why I often prefer to write something "new" by hand. Whereas once I have the characters and setting firmly in mind, I can come to my laptop, close my eyes and type away with abandon.

Now one thing I've had enough learning about is washing dishes by hand... where is the dishwasher!!

(Pictures of hat coming soon.)