This is just another quick non-recipe post, but it was so delicious, I had to share. I picked up some beets on my way home last night, and they came with the greens attached. Growing up, we always had a vegetable garden, and I remember one year in particular, there were a lot of beets. I don't have any fond memories of beet greens, but I know we at them. A lot of them. I didn't want to be wasteful with my beet purchase, so I figured I'd eat the greens too. It turns out that beet greens are really darn good, and now I'm bugged that there weren't more greens on my beets! 

hmm, still working on my lighting issues for night time food photos. I will figure this out!

I had some wild-caught yellowtail, so I sliced it into inch-thick little steaks. I just seasoned them with sea salt and pepper and topped them with some finely minced shallots. I chopped up the beet greens and also tossed them with some olive oil. I put everything in my cast iron skillet and roasted it at 450 degrees for around seven minutes. I garnished the fish with a dash of ponzu sauce and some snipped chives. Simple and delicious! 

The beets themselves also got the roasting treatment. I par boiled them first, just so I wouldn't have to leave the oven on so long.

They, too, were tossed with olive oil and salt and pepper. I saved them to use in a simple salad for tonight's dinner.

Natural daylight is so much easier! I think I am getting the hang of this!

It's just baby spinach, beets, slivered onions, sheep's milk feta and an olive oil/balsamic dressing. Mr. Heylucy hates beets, so I haven't been buying them, but he may have to learn to live with them in the house. I think I'll sneak him some beet greens and see how he reacts. Don't tell!

Yay for three day weekends! I know some people might go somewhere fun, or throw a party, or go to the beach, but I was happy to just stay home and spend some time in my little house studio. It's been awhile, and I thoroughly enjoyed just puttering. Plus, now I have lots of blog fodder for the rest of the week, I can't wait to share some of the things I've been making. For now I will just tell you about some little necklaces I finished up and listed in my etsy shop. 

You might remember these from earlier this summer. I'm happy to say that I finished them and listed three on etsy. I kept one for myself, of course, and another is going to someone who I think will especially like it. 

I had all my jewelry/beading supplies out and spread all over my work table. I'm a terrible jewelry maker, but it so fun to play with the little bits and pieces. 

I kept these simple, and just hung them from a bit of leather cord. I don't wear necklaces often, but I tend to like this sort of long, silly pendent type jewelry. Pretty soon I'm going to need something to organize all these necklaces I can't stop making. I'm thinking something like this is awfully cute, and thrifty too!

One of the things I have had to work on in my quest to eat better is planning and cooking. Obviously, I've always enjoyed cooking, but spending a quiet Sunday afternoon preparing dinner is a little different than throwing together something to eat at 8 o'clock on Tuesday night after a long day at work. I thought I would do some posts about some things I do to make it easier for me to eat well and avoid the drive-thru, even after a 12-hour day. Even though most of these recipe posts probably won't have formal recipes, I hope you'll find them useful. One of the things I love about cooking is being creative. I have lots of cookbooks, and read plenty of food blogs, but ultimately, I usually just let those things inspire me, and I prefer to cook without constraints and measuring spoons.

Last week we cleaned out our fridge. I am embarrassed to admit how long it has been since it has had a really thorough scrubbing, so let's just say that we probably should have donned hazmat suits. Sometimes I just make too much of something, and leftovers get put in a jar and eventually end up in the back corner, obscured by a bag of spinach or an enormous storage container full of pot roast. The saddest thing was the jar of pesto that had turned a sickly grey-green. It got me thinking, however. Pesto is such a rich, concentrated sauce, why do most recipes make so much? I also ended up with a bad case of Pine Mouth (who knew? I thought I had a brain tumor, or something) from that batch of pesto, so I kind of lost my enthusiasm for finding uses for it.  

So, I had three problems to solve: first, make a smaller batch of pesto, second, make it without pine nuts, and third, find ways to use it all up. 

The first and second problems were actually easy to fix. I'm pretty sure pesto is one of those things that's hard to mess up, so don't worry too much about exact quantities. I used my stick blender for the batch I made last night, but I think I'm going to try the Italian grandmother version from 101Cookbooks, and chop everything by hand next time. I started out with a good handful of basil leaves, and added a few cashews (I've also used macadamia nuts, and that was delicious too), two cloves of garlic, a little sprinkling of sea salt, and somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 cup of olive oil (I just kept adding until I liked the texture). When I had all that nicely blended together, I used my micro-plane to add some finely-shredded parmesan cheese. It was a pretty hard chunk, so I got tired after grating about 1/4 cup. This I just stirred in with a spoon. I ended up with a nice little batch of pesto, around half a cup, and the pine nuts were not missed at all. Never be afraid to taste and adjust as you cook, and it will work out just fine!

I started with a simple pesto roast chicken-just slather a whole chicken with pesto, and roast at 375 degrees for 45-60 minutes. You can baste it with additional pesto once or twice to keep things nice and green. I added some steamed carrots and cauliflower to make a meal, and I used them to mop up the pesto from my plate. Delicious!

Now to use it all up! I thought that covering a whole chicken in this delicious, bright green paste would take care of most of it, but there is still plenty left for some other uses. Since I'm not eating grains, the traditional pastas and sandwiches are not going to work, but I've got a list of things to try this week and I am going to do my best to use it all up. Here we go:

• Stem and clean a portobello mushroom. Place it upside down on a baking sheet and spread with pesto. Crack an egg on top and season with salt and pepper. Bake in a 350 degree oven until the egg is done to your liking (15 minutes or so)
• Toss a little pesto with steamed vegetables instead of butter
• Add a couple spoonfuls of pesto to a fritatta or crustless quiche just before baking, and gently swirl it in
• Make a simple chicken salad with homemade aioli, chopped celery and onion, olives and/or nuts. Use this as a stuffing for a big, ripe, heirloom tomato
• Top poached eggs with a spoonful of pesto and serve with some good prosciutto
• Stuffed chicken: pound a breast or thigh flat (about 1/4 inch thick), and place a little pesto, some sun-dried tomatoes, and a little chunk of fresh mozzarella in the middle. Roll up and sauté in olive oil until the chicken is done and the cheese is nice and melty

I've done the mushroom before, it was delicious and very rich, and I've also made pesto chicken salad, which was also delicious and rich. I think I may do a quick fritatta for breakfast tomorrow, and last night's carrots and cauliflower were so good with the little bit of pesto drippings from my chicken that I think I want to cook up a bunch of vegetables for dinner tonight and toss them with a little more generous coating of pesto. What do you do with pesto (that doesn't involve pasta!)?  

I briefly mentioned a recent book purchase, Plate to Pixel, in a post earlier this month. I'm not done reading and absorbing, but I've been skimming through and one of the things I've really loved about Helene's styling is the rustic table top backgrounds she uses. I didn't see any explicit directions in the book or on her blog (although there is a brief scene of her painting some wood in this promo video), but I've got piles of old fence boards, so I made up my own version. I finally finished it this weekend, and when the skies went dark and a freak thunderstorm rolled through this afternoon, I decided to set it up on the porch and try it out. 

I painted one side a robin's egg blue that I had laying around (someday it will be an accent wall in my laundry room), and sanded the other side, so it's two backgrounds in one! I still need to work on adjusting my camera settings, I think these might be a bit too bright and over-exposed, despite the grey skies. I even started playing around with this reflector set I recently bought, it was quite a bargain! I used the diffuser disc on the photo above and directly below, but there's still some glare. I think I better go read some more, and learn how to adjust my camera better. 

Obviously, my styling and composing skills are rather lacking still, but I am going to keep practicing. In the meantime, I've got some raspberries and cream to eat. Oh, I thought you might like to see the whole background thingie: 

Here are the very technical instructions (wherein I probably don't use any of the proper woodworking terminology): I took three 6' fence boards, and sawed each in half. Then I cut a couple pieces of 1×2 boards that I also had laying around to the width of the three boards together. I sanded everything and laid three boards down, wrong side up. I put wood glue along one side of one of the 1×2 boards, and positioned it across the three boards. I tried to just nail the 1×2 to the fence boards, but the nails just wouldn't go in, so I used my smallest drill bit (1/16") to drill through them (two holes for each fence board) and then pounded the nails in. After doing this four times, my drill bit broke, so I went up to the next one, and hoped it wasn't too big. Luckily, it wasn't so I continued to add the second 1×2 to the other end. Then I placed the remaining three fence boards on top of the 1×2's, and did the same thing again, except instead of the nails going from the 1×2's into the fence boards, I went through the fence boards into the 1×2's. the nails I used had flat heads, and this is the side that I painted, so they show a little through the paint. I was going for rustic, so this doesn't bother me, but I probably could have used finishing nails and counter-sunk them and used a little wood filler to hide them. Then I painted and sanded the one side. I've left the other side naked so far, but I may stain or wax it eventually. This is so much nicer than my ugly green counter tops for taking pictures of food (and maybe other things too!). 

I don't keep up with music like I used to, but I thought I'd give Spotify a try. As much as I love my iPhone, I hate hate hate iTunes (why do they have to come out with a new version every other day? I don't have time to download and install software all the time). Plus, I don't have much room in my budget for buying music, so I like the idea of being able to really listen to a whole song or album before spending money on it.

So far, making playlists is nice and easy with Spotify. I don't know that I'll pay for it every month, but I thought it would be fun to post a monthly playlist, so maybe we can all discover some new, good music together! If you'd like a Spotify invite, let me know in the comments (be sure to include your email address), and I'll send one. I've got a half dozen to share, so the first six comments can have one! 

The first link goes to the whole playlist, and below are links to each song. It's a mix of old and new. I like it :) 

August

Matt Costa – Mr. Pitiful
The Virgins – Private Affair – Explicit Album Version
Aqualung – Fingertip
Pete Yorn – Precious Stone
The xx – Stars
Skepta – Rolex Sweep
The Avett Brothers – I And Love And You
Ben Lee – Gamble Everything For Love
Blakroc – Ain't Nothing Like You [Hoochie Coo] Feat. Jim Jones, Mos Def
Bright Eyes – Bowl of Oranges
Leagues – Haunted
Paul Simon – The Obvious Child
Mat Kearney – Hey Mama
Kathleen Edwards – Back to Me
The Naked And Famous – Young Blood
Eels – Fresh Feeling

I am not a jewelry maker. I don't even wear much jewelry beyond earrings and my wedding ring. Still, sometimes it's nice to add just a little something something to an outfit. And sometimes you just want to make something that won't take hours and hours or loud power tools. I've noticed little leather bracelets every where lately, worn in multiples. The lightness of them appealed to me, so I decided to whip up my own little girly take on them. 

I also had some fabric scraps laying around, as one often does when one likes to play with fabric. Somewhere in my internet crawling I saw some cute leather bracelets wrapped with stripes of floss, so I decided to try something similar with fabric. Once the fabric was on there (with just a dot of Fabri-tak at each end to hold it in place), I dug through my big jar of pearl buttons and pulled out some of the smallest ones I could find. It was easy enough to just stitch them in place. 

I had some cord ends, so I glued them in place and crimped the ends a bit to fit closer to the flat leather. I need to find some of those end crimpy thingies that are actually made for this sort of project, I'll have to find a bead store for that I think. I also used giant jump rings, but it's what I had. I want to do a few more, and maybe try some knotted closures so I don't end up with a whole bunch of metal bits. 

They are very sweet and I think I need three or four more. 

I had so much creative ADD this weekend, I just kept flitting from one project to another. There were hexi-puffs and leather bracelets and a trip to the thrift store where $9 worth of treasures were bought. I sawed down some boards to make a background for food photos, and made some fabric napkins out of a blouse from the aforementioned thrifted treasures. And then there was all the laundry, cooking, cleaning, and errand-running that I also squeezed in. I'm getting tired again just thinking about it all! I need some longer weekends to do everything I want to do. Anyway, there will be more on all those things as I finish them (except not the laundry or cleaning, that was all very boring, and it's never done, anyway). 

I did manage to finish a very little porch project, however. After my succulent in a teacup, which still looks as good as the day I planted it, I had a hankering for more succulents to dress up the dining table out there. I found this perfect little tin planter at my favorite nursery, and picked out some pink, green, and white succulents to fill it up. I probably could have squeezed in another plant or two, but I can live with a little space between plants for now. I'd write up a tutorial, except it would be very short: get a container, get some cactus mix, and get some plants, arrange the plants pleasingly in the container, adding cactus mix as necessary. 

Isn't it so photogenic? I could become a crazy succulent aficionado, I think. They are weirdly addicting. It's a simple little thing, but so pleasing to look at.