Call me crazy, but I love beets. The red, staining root that is beet is one of my favorite winter treats. Each winter, after the beets have grown big, red, and juicy, I pull them from their cozy homes and make raw red beet salad.


That's right. Raw. Acidic. Surprisingly cleansing.

This red beet salad is loaded with vitamins. I combine grate beets, apples, and chopped celery tossed in olive oil and apple cider vinegar to create a stunning side salad that will detoxify your blood.

Did you know that nearly 50 billion burgers are eaten by Americans each year? Yup. PBS told me so. This statistic doesn't count for alternative meat substitutes...only red meat. Cow.

I brought my daughter up vegan for nearly four years because I felt it was important to establish a healthy diet of vegetables, fruits, seeds, nuts and the like. During that time, she grew like any other toddler and never had a health problem. In fact, she is super healthy and has only had two colds in her life. She has no allergies and she is incredibly bright. I did supplement her with fortified soy or almond milk and a vitamin to be sure. You never know.

I know. I know, where the hell am I going with this-- I did have a point. You don't need to eat animals to survive. However, you can't survive without fortified foods or a vitamin. B12 is an essential part of our diet that tends to come only from animals or through processing. Either way, I am okay with it, but I want to keep our lifestyles as close to the earth as possible.

Okay, back to my point. I never intended to force her into a vegan diet or lifestyle. Honestly, I don't think we should consume dairy often because it is weird and eggs sort of freak me out...so..when my daughter turned four, I told her that if she wanted to try animals, she could.

We started with fish, which she loved. And now she is into turkey. This week we made turkey burgers. But not just any turkey burger! These turkey burgers are loaded with pureed carrots, bell peppers, garlic, and onion. Because even though she is eating a bit of animal, our consumption of vegetables will not wane. Now, our diet includes 1-2 meals per week that had fish or turkey. I'm still keeping most dairy out of the picture, and I don't know if I'll keep this animal-eating practice up, but for now, it is what we are playing with. 

The savory kick of Anaheim chilies mixed with roasted corn and shredded turkey makes for a perfect burrito, enchilada or taco.  I used leftover Thanksgiving turkey to start this dish and then combined it with green enchilada sauce before roasting it in the oven at 350 for an hour. Yum!

Thanksgiving left a lot of food in my fridge -- mostly turkey -- turkey wings; turkey legs ; turkey everything...turkey carcass...yup. I used the turkey bones to make a rich, marrowy stock that served as the base for the soup that I made last night. The soup is so easy -- you can use veggie leftovers and add new veggies to the soup for a rich, winter stew. It features spinach, carrots, potatoes, corn and ditalini pasta.

I love this recipe because you can eat it immediately, store some in the fridge and freeze the rest in heavy-duty bags for another night. The stew will last 3-6 months in the freezer if properly packaged.

This soup pairs well with crust bread and butter.