Recipe roundup

Beets with Walnuts, Goat Cheese, and Baby Greens from Cooking Light. Have you ever stuck a forkful of something in your mouth and, before you even began to chew, said “Oh ny gawf iss iss so goob!” That was my reaction when I tried this salad. Sweet beets, tangy dressing, tannic walnuts, creamy goat cheese. Unf. I was having this for lunch and didn’t want to spend all day roasting beets so I used canned (non-pickled) beets. I also used a fresh goat cheese, not a sharp feta. Heap it up on a big plate and throw in some garlic bread and I say it’s dinner.

Corn Pancakes with Smoked Salmon and Lemon-Chive Cream from Cooking Light. I made a batch of these, let them cool, and stuck them in the fridge. I popped two in the microwave the next morning and substituted bacon (see below) for the smoked salmon and had them for breakfast. Excellent! Cheap, quick, fancy-looking. Note that I love smoked salmon (even for breakfast) and the only reason I subbed bacon was so that I wouldn’t have to listen to Matt’s objections to the very existence of seafood at 4:30 am.

Less-Mess Bacon from Martha Stewart. This was so revolutionary that I had to tweet about it. My morning struggle just got a lot easier. Now I buy the bacon of my choice, bake it all ahead of time, cool it, and pop it in the fridge. When I need some for a BLT or breakfast I just nuke it for 20 seconds or warm it in a pan. It’s like restaurant bacon!