Golden Beets, more chicken, and some steamed veggies.

I started to watch The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. After about 10 minutes, I realized just how exhausted I was from my day and decided it was nap time. As much as I love LoTR (and I'll be finishing watching at least the first half of Fellowship tonight after dinner); Sleep is an important part of being healthy. Waking up at 4 something for early morning Yoga is awesome but...yeah. Sleep helps.

First thing I did after waking up: Dishes. Cleaned the whole kitchen. I spend *tons* of time in my kitchen and part of making that fun for myself is making sure things are clean and that I have some music going when I'm in there! Coffee helps too =) (but not too late at night...did you know the half-life of caffeine is 5-6 hours!). That means that 5-6 hours after you drank those two espresso shots, you still have one espresso shot in your system. Yikes!

Second thing...I started thinking about what's for dinner. Chicken seems to be my go-to meat at the moment because I already have a bunch cooked up. I used all my sweet potatoes for breakfast and lunch. Time to check the fridge. I found some wonderful looking local golden beets from the Woodinville Farmers Market. Cooking beets is a snap.

The Beets

Organic Local Golden Beets

What you'll need:
-Some beets.
-Some tin-foil.
-An oven.
-(Optional) An oven-safe pan. You could always just put them right on the oven rack but beware! They will leak some beet juice.
-(Optional) A veggie scrub brush.
-(Optional) A cutting board.

A side note about beets: They dye things. This includes when you go to the bathroom after eating a whole bunch of them...don't freak out! It's okay. I also don't like to use my wooden cutting board for beets because of the whole dying thing. I like my wooden cutting board to not be bright/dark red/golden.

The skinny (instructions):
1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Remember, do this early! That way you're never waiting on your oven, it's waiting on you!
2. Wash and scrub down your beets. Get all of that dirt off 'em.

Washed and scrubbed golden beets on my (non wooden) cutting board.

3. Dry 'em and chop off the greens and the tail using a sharp knife (sharp knives are actually safer than dull knives).

Beets with both ends cut off.

4. Wrap them tightly in tin foil.

Wrapping in tin foil -- stage one.

Wrapping in tin foil -- stage two. Little beet cocoons :-).

5. Bake them for about 45 minutes - 1 hour or so. You can test if they are done by trying to stick a fork in 'em. If the fork goes in easy, you're good! If not, give them some more time. They are very forgiving so don't worry about overcooking them.

45 minutes at 400 degrees.

Finished beets.

Hmm...now for a side dish and the chicken. Cold chicken was *great* for lunch but this time around, steamed and piping hot chicken and veggies would be nice. Solution? Throw the chicken in a steamer with some veggies. I found some french style green beans (not exactly Paleo...but I'm 95% Paleo and think that green beans are just too darn healthy to pass up) and some brussel sprouts in my freezer (I have to admit...I don't think I've ever had a brussel sprout). The adventure continues!

Store the left-over beets.

Steamed dinner =).

And plated/served! Yay!

You don't even need a little steamer for this. Whenever you want to steam something you can always do it on the stove-top as well. Just boil a small amount of water in a pot and then plunk in what you want to steam (ideally with one of those steamer tray things, but you don't even need that!). Then let it heat back up and turn the heat OFF. Cover it and let it steam for a little bit. Drain. Done.

Perry, The Simple Paleo Cook