We subscribe to Boston Organics (is subscribe the right word? I guess so, but it sounds funny to subscribe to veggies). Every week a box appears on our front porch full of organic goodies. For a long time we had a CSA, but I found myself overwhelmed. I love eggplant, but I finally lost it on the fourth week of getting five eggplants. Need I say I’m the only one who likes eggplant in this house? With Boston Organics, I have a “no” list (as in NEVER send me cauliflower because we will never, ever eat it) and they send reasonable amounts of each food. We get 2/3 veggie and 1/3 fruit. It works. Well. Except for those times when I leave town for a weekend. Or when Adam has a lot of nights working late or Doodles has Cub Scouts or track and field or Pie simply melts down early and we don’t have family dinners. Which has been happening a lot lately. So the veggies have been piling up. I had three bunches of asparagus in the fridge and six beets and a whole lot of yellow squash. I was determined to use some of this stuff up.
Asparagus? Easy. Roasted for Shabbat dinner tonight. That’s the best way: a smidgen of olive oil, a bit o’ time in the oven, and we’re all happy. Beets? A little more challenging. Adam loves beets. I think I could even call them his favorite vegetable. But he likes them really simple. Roasted. And that’s about it. I dressed them up tonight with a little lemon, onion, and olive oil. Myself, I prefer them with oranges and goat cheese, but my man is a simple man so plain beets it is.
But I refuse to prepare all six beets “plain,” as Adam won’t eat leftovers, which means I spend days eating boring beets until they get slimy and tossed and I feel guilty about wasting food. So today I had a brainstorm. Red Velvet Cake. I was going to make Red Velvet Cupcakes. With the beets. (Which, by the way, is one of the traditional ways of making it. None of that “two bottles of red dye #40.”) Genius.
I roast the beets. I puree the beets. Pie comes into the kitchen. “What are those?”
“Pureed beets,” I tell her.
“Ewww!”
“No, they’re good!”
Her nose wrinkles. “They look gross.”
She goes off to play. I bake hallah. I roast potatoes. I make Red Velvet Cupcakes. Pie returns when the cupcakes are done.
“Cupcakes!” she exclaims.
“Yep!” I say, frosting them with a cream cheese frosting.
“What kind?” she asks.
I hesitate. “They’re chocolate cupcakes. The name of them is Red Velvet Cupcakes.”
“Red Velvet?” Pie asks. And she gets right to it. “Are they called Red Velvet because of beets? Did you put the beets in the cupcakes!”
Luckily, I have the other three beets prepared to make Adam’s plain Jane salad. So I evade the question. “The beets are here in the sink.”
“Oh,” she says. And went back to play.
At dinner tonight, she pronounced the cupcakes “delicious!”
And the boy? He’s nobody’s fool and you’re not going to sneak a veggie past him, even in a cupcake. My Red Velvet Cupcake, which by the way, didn’t have a smidgen of red in them by the end, were pronounced “not for me,” and left half eaten.
You can fool some of the Pies some of the time and all of the Doodles… never.
