Can't Beet Chevron!

Dear Tofurkey,

My spell check did not know "frittata" either. Fortunately, all those years of 501 verbs in the backseats of cars with you got me to the spelling. Clearly you couldn't recall the past participle of "friggere" (to fry), which is fritto. I suppose you have need of your brain cells for other superfluous tasks like nursing your baby, keeping your house in god repair, or other nonsense.

I am happy to bring babies into our correspondence (especially yours, whose cuteness I can vouch for). I may bring the triplets in from time to time too (I just cooked for them for the first time with reasonable success). So no need to hold back! That blog looks really cool and maybe I'll get something from it for the kids (or for us). I have always loved fruit leather, but never made it. I probably should try. Are cherry and strawberry easy fruits to use? You know red is always the best flavor!

Last weekend, we had or Canadian neighbors over for dinner (stereotypes must work--they are so nice!). I made two things that you had suggested to me: Mark Bittman's tomato paella and your Beets & Cukes Summer Salad. Look!

OK, so the pictures are a little adulterated, but that's because they were so delicious that I couldn't get pictures before we started devouring the food! I made the paella with shrimp and fried them lightly before I added the rice. It worked great. I would probably add some other shellfish next time, and other veggies. It's a fantastic start for a paella though. And the salad was delicious too. Next time I'm going to make a balsamic reduction with thyme so that I can remove the thyme sprigs and not have the dressing be gritty, but otherwise it was perfect.

The difficulty in preparation came when I asked Angel to get goat cheese. He knows that I'm a food snob so he tries to get precise instructions on what to buy. I told him there would be logs of chevre there, or he could get the white plastic tubs with the green top. He said, "no that's Chevron, not goat cheese." I tried to tell him that chevre was goat cheese. He vehemently disagreed. I then appealed to the fact that I studied French and his best French is "huh, huh, huh." He still didn't believe me. Fortunately, dictionary.com saved the day--chevre: any cheese made from goat's milk. I get no benefit of the doubt, but at least we didn't end up with Chevron on our food!

Love,
Turkey