Roasted Beet Salad + Watch My Favorite Cartoon

Beets will always remind me of being a kid, but I never ate beets as a child. How can that be? Keep reading.

Beets were always one of those not-a-chance-in-hell menu items when I was a kid. I don’t think we ever had beets once growing up. I knew what they were, of course. They were those deep purple rooty, bulby looking things that probably tasted like crap. Where’s a time machine when you need one?

Today’s MAKE is Roasted Beet Salad.

This beet salad is the height of sophistication and simplicity. So, let’s talk about it and how you make it first, but then let’s talk about Doug.

Preheat your oven to 425. Scrub a pound of beets, and leave on the roots and an inch or two of the stems. Toss the beets on a baking sheet, and slide them into the oven for an hour (or until tender). Don’t season them. Don’t oil them.

When they’re done, take them out and let them cool. I didn’t want to wait for them to cool, so I put them in a colander and ran cold water over them. I peeled them at the same time, under the running water.

Once peeled, slice the beets into to 1/4 inch slices, and arrange on a plate – a white plate, preferably. I love how the deep red beets look against a stark, white canvas. It’s art for dinner.

Next, you need to whip up a little dressing for this salad. Combine two tablespoons of red wine vinegar, one teaspoon of extra-virgin olive oil, 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1/2 teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper.

Drizzle a little of the mixture (maybe half) over the beets. Use the rest to dress six cups of arugula. Grab the greens in handfuls, and drop them, dressed and dripping, on top of the beets. Finally, shave some big curls of quality Parmesan over the top.

Beez and I devoured this salad. The roasted beets were wonderfully tender and sweet. Sweet like sugar sweet. Beets are nature’s candy. I would recommend that you not dress the salad greens until just before you’re ready to serve. Soggy salad is sad.

This recipe is from Page 90 of Cooking Light magazine, August 2009.

“Ah ee oo, killer tofu!”

Have you ever seen the Nickelodeon cartoon, Doug? I have. I’ve seen every episode of the Nick toon. Although I haven’t watched it in years, when I was a kid, Doug was everything I wanted to be. He had a cool dog, married parents, a two-story house and dreamed of being a cartoonist when he grew up.

Doug and all his friends were ga-ga over a band named, The Beets. That line in bold just above is a lyric from one of their songs. They were like a freaky, punk version of the Beatles, and one of my favorite episodes was when Doug and his friend, Skeeter Valentine, got to meet the Beets in person!

I’ve dropped a snippet of an episode I found on YouTube below. It’s actually one of my favorite episodes. It’s a mysterious episode that involves a guy in a burger suit.