Jon's birthday feast and a beet salad

I have been teaching a May-mester class for the past three weeks, and three hours a day of teaching plus all the prep work involved has meant not much time for the blog or the kitchen. Jon has been great, making sure I had lunch at school and usually having dinner ready for me when I got home. Luckily, tomorrow is the last day of class, so I will be able to get back into my normal routine. Yesterday was Jon's birthday, and I did extra prep on Tuesday so I could devote most of my time to him on Wednesday. I spoiled him rotten, if I do say so myself. I bought a very manly bouquet of flowers and wrapped him a bunch of presents (mostly kitchen stuff we've been meaning to get for a while) and cooked tons of his favorite foods. Over the next few days I'll be putting up the recipes. It's a lot for one post.

The birthday boy eating a freeze-dried green bean.

The menu:
Carrot salad
Beet salad
Five-spice beet soup
Moroccan-spiced onions
Puff pastry spanakopita
Homemade mint ice cream

He loved it. I was really happy that I could do something nice for him since he always makes me feel like a queen on my birthday and other special occasions.

The salad plate.
The beet salad is too dark to photograph well.

This beet salad recipe is a simple one that we go back to all the time. I can't get enough greens, and the beets themselves are pretty good too. The smaller the beets, the better. We usually get ours at the farmers' market, although yesterday's were from the grocery store. Since it's a salad, the amounts are entirely up to you. We probably do about 1 tbsp of nuts and 1 tbsp of cheese per salad. (We actually didn't have cheese yesterday because we discovered that the goat cheese had gone blue and fuzzy. Not desirable.)

Beet salad:
1 tsp neutral oil
Zest of 1/2 lemon
Greens from one bunch of beets, washed, stems removed
One or two cooked beets, chopped
Pecans or walnuts, coarsely chopped
Blue cheese or goat cheese crumbles
Extra-virgin olive oil
Balsamic vinegar

Heat oil in saute pan over medium heat. Add lemon zest and greens. Saute until greens are wilted, poking them often.
To assemble the salads, put the chopped beets, nuts, and cheese on the bed of beet greens. Dress with olive oil and vinegar.