coming up for air

the last two Martha Stewart magazines have renewed my faith in the domestic goddess; salad days features with interesting combinations of ingredients, and a spread on cooking with flowers - just my speed! This is from last month: beets with yogurt, hazelnuts, spiced brown butter, pickled nootka rose petals and doug fir tips. Martha called for dill (not doug fir), but since I had some foraged young tips on hand, anyway, I thought we'd substitute them for dill and make this dish EXTRA Northwestern.

I've been writing 10-14 hours a day, every day, for the last ... I-don't-know-how-long. I have one last chapter to edit this week, as soon as my advisor sends me my edits (tomorrow), I'll be back to the grind. For tonight, we're making the most of my brief reprieve. Since I can't stop the insomnia/nightmare combo (it has been weeks since I've slept more than 4 or 5 hours - or slept through the night - or not had terrible nightmares), we can at least enjoy this pretty, romantic salad and a special bottle of wine to celebrate my completion of chapter four today.

*Edited to add: per Jenny's request, here's the link to the recipe for pickled rose petals on Martha Stewart's website! The only change I made was to use a bottle of "orange muscat champagne vinegar" from Trader Joe's instead of white wine vinegar. A little sweeter.

And here is the link the recipe for this beet salad, in case you want to try the whole thing. We used big beets instead of baby beets, and I substituted doug fir for dill, but otherwise we followed the recipe. Delicious!