Pasta Salad (with beet water)

After boiling some beets the other day I saved the dark pink water on a hunch that I could use it for something else.

The internet yields many useful and everyday ideas for beet water, most of which take advantage of the tendency of beet juice to stain anything it touches: egg dye, facial toner, hair dye, colorant for various foods, a liquid addition to soups. And there was one weird one: Faux grape jelly. Bleh.

I decided to make a pasta salad, cooking the pasta in the beet water. I thought it would be pink, but not this pink! The pasta even gained a very slight, sweet taste of beets.
What I had on hand: white onion, green onion, diced olives, pepperoncinis. I almost added some fake sausage but was really into the flavors of the raw onions and didn't want that to be overshadowed. Pasta salad always has this distinct flavor and I realized this flavor is vinegar. So I added white wine vinegar (to taste) with olive oil and salt and pepper. As a pasta salad, it is middle of the road. Visually though, I am a very happy camper.A completely non-related note to those who comment on the blog: I love it! And I want to respond to each post but I cannot, yet, figure out how. Sad. This is my blog and I don't know how to work it. Hopefully I'll make some breakthroughs soon.

It started with beets...

This was a wonderful meal that just kind of happened as I walked through the grocery store. Well, really, Bree and I had this great adventure involving a warm drink (Toddy!) in a thermos at some bluffs overlooking the river at sunset. It was nice but then it was cold and we were hungry and had beets on our minds.

It's hard for me to describe the meal because there ended up being many parts instead of one bowl of every ingredient, like a stir-fry. I suppose that's what lists are for:
-Beet and a pear mixed green salad with White Wine Vinaigrette
-Smoked Apple Sage sausage
-Sauteed beet greens and fried Polenta rounds

Beets are wonderful and sweet and their leaves are actually very nutritious and largely overlooked in the leafy-greens department. I lightly sauteed the leaves in a little Earth Balance until they wilted and served them with the polenta and sausage. The polenta was fried in a combination of olive oil, balsamic vinegar and course salt and pepper until the surface was crispy and golden.

The sausage is made by a company called Field Roast from Seattle, WA. This is the most delicious veggie sausage I have ever had in my life! They are pricey at around $6.99 for four links, but they are very much worth the splurge (especially when on sale for $4.99). I lightly browned the sausage in a pan after slicing it into little rounds.

As for the salad, I boiled the beets and cut them into small cubes and added them the the thinly cut pear and onion. Usually I don't boil veggies because all the good stuff boils out into the water but I've saved the beet water and look forward to reusing it today. It would be nice to use the beet water in a fresh juice of some sort but I don't have that technology so I might use it to make a pink pasta salad of some sort. A quick internet search yields many interesting results for beet water usage, though.