Recipe #4-Pasta with Beets and Ricotta & Avocado, Beet, and Orange Salad

Sorry I have been MIA the past couple of days despite us completing TWO recipes at once. I was busy formulating a letter to send to the makers of the pan that Ms. Boyardee hated last recipe, demanding they go out of business. At her request of course.

Beets, Beets, and more Beets. I've already shared with my readers my new fondness for these maroon delights and the subsequent stool surprises that await each ingestion-er. As I write this, Ms. Boyardee is peeling more beets and reported we were "beet obsessed". Something Dr. Dre and I have in common I suppose. Anyways, Ms. Boyardee found these two recipes and I was immediately hooked because of my favourite main ingredient.

Pasta with Beets and Ricotta- The picture makes this recipe look a lot harder than it is. The most time consuming part would be roasting the beets and Ms. Boyardee already had that done by the time I got home from work. So I threw on some Frank Sinatra, poured some wine and got started cooking. By got started I mean, asked Ms. Boyardee what the hell she wants me to do. Sous chef I think is the proper term for Ms. Boyardee's  lackey. Good looking lackey, that sounds better. Ms. Boyardee got her food processor out, and made the beets into a pulp mixture and added oil, salt, pepper, sun-dried tomato and cayenne pepper flakes. My incredibly tough job was to toast some walnuts, and by god they were pretty toasted when she called for them to be thrown into the processor. We then just make a basic pasta and stir it around into the mixture and the pasta takes the colour of the beet mixture. We added a scoop of ricotta on top and some red pepper flakes for purposes of the picture, which is EXACTLY like the photo in the book. No, it's better than the photo in the book. Martha Stewart should be knocking on our door shortly with photography offers I'm assuming.

The recipe was really delicious, and in my very humble opinion, the toasted walnuts added that little extra something that was needed. If Ms. Boyardee and I had one criticism it would have been to use goat cheese instead of ricotta, then again we have been known for our biases towards the goat.

Rating:

Ms. B: 5/10
J:5/10

Avocado, Beet, and Orange Salad- I'm a huge sandwich guy, and one of the things that I miss is making sandwiches. The process is just as rewarding as the first bite. I no longer use meat now though so avocado has taken on that role and I can put a whole avocado on one sandwich. I'm kind of a big fan. So a salad with beets AND avocado, easy sale. Lackey's job was to toast homemade croutons and toast sunflower seeds (I see a pattern emerging). Both were a success so I may have to ask for a raise. She pays me in beer.  We added the beets, avocado, orange, spinach, croutons, more beets, sunflowers seeds and did I mention the beets and a homemade dressing. Ms. Boyardee went a little (a lot) overboard with the picture and tried to get the plate perfect, down to the beet juice and sunflower seeds as you can see below.

Rating:

Ms. B: 4/10
J: 5.5/10