Beet it!

The palms of my hands are red from beet juice which isn't so easy to wash off. I pray I won't be called to another interrogation any time soon, or more trouble would follow as a result. To the first one of those (mandatory interrogations), I arrived carrying a copy of Vladimir Nabokov's novel Invitation to a Beheading, ostensibly as a packaging of sorts for the Bob Dylan CD titled Lovesick, published for some odd reason on a Victoria's Secret record label, which CD had been presented to me raw, without a jewel case, and was to serve there as a piece exculpating evidence. Given the weird cultural atmosphere of the times, that idea didn't quite work. But that's another story altogether. Back to the beets.

Slicing beets is a Holiday ritual for me, making borscht, using a recipe that is in part improvised, as I have been looking for, but have not found, the secret ingredient that gives it a special tangy taste, like mom and the woman who now owns a restaurant in Santa Monica made it. Is it the Maggi sauce? Or white vinegar? Or dried mushrooms? I use all three and still am not quite there. Maybe it's the wrong dry mushrooms, you must use those that grow in the forest where wild bisons roam, pee and poop? I don't know, but I keep trying, using the Japanese variety that's available here. (The cookbooks are not much help. The taste must be a deep secret like the Coca Cola formula!)

The other dish I know how to make from red beets is called Ćwikła (go ahead, pronounce it!) and it is beets pickled with fresh horseradish and white vinegar, a dish that none of my co-workers will touch if I were to bring it to department pot luck parties, not even the Indians among them, who normally enjoy eating spicy foods. That's all right, more for my friend and me! (A strong alcoholic libation is required, too.)

And that's the Christmas Holiday non-traditional beet story.