Not Hospital Food

I'm feeling much better and less like a mental bitch. I've been researching how I can improve my diet so that it can better serve my body. Also, as was so delicately mentioned by the Liver People at the hospital, I'm getting fat. So while I wait for my surgery I'm going to try and up my diet game. I'm a good cook and try to eat well but sometimes its so easy to get lazy and also, stress eating,  and of course, sometimes you just want to eat cheese dip from a jar and watch the world burn.

So the other day, having been poking around the internets in search of what I can eat to benefit my liver, I discovered that Beets and Walnuts are good for liver health. Over the summer I became enamored of beets after a lifetime of hating them (due in no small part to a year of school dinners in the UK that seemed to come with a never ending supply of grotesque tinned beets. Every. Goddamned. Day) I learned to trust them again after a friends husband produced them in roasted form at a dinner party, then over the summer I began to experiment myself, and found that a beet salad is *divine*. This is what I came up with after reading a bunch of other recipes. I don't measure anything when I'm making food so all measurements are a guess. It's not baking, so adjust to suit your own tastes.

Ingredients:
1 large golden beet (or any kind of beet really - if they're small cook a few)
1 medium sized orange
1 small shallot
Handful of Arugula (about 1 1/2 cups)
Goat Cheese (I used about a 1/2 inch slice)
About 6 walnut halves (or if you have chopped ones maybe about 1 heaping tbs)
1 tbs extra virgin olive oil
2 tsp white vinegar
1/4 tsp sugar
pinch of kosher salt
fresh ground pepper
1/2 tsp of dijon mustard


I took the beets, peeled them, and chopped them into quarters (go for half cut if they're small)
put in a foil lined pie tin, drizzled with olive oil and salt and pepper, covered with foil (tightly) and put in a 400 degree oven for about an hour and 15 minutes (I cooked several large beets at once to have leftovers on hand, if you're only doing a small amount, or cooking smaller beets, I would start checking them at 30 minutes). Let cool

I supremed the orange (don't know how to supreme an orange? look here) and squeezed the remainders of remaining juice into a bowl for the vinaigrette.

To the orange juice add salt, pepper, sugar, extra virgin olive oil, vinegar and dijon mustard, give it a whisk.

Thinly slice the shallot, and the beets, put them in a bowl with the arugula, and toss with the vinaigrette

Plate it, and sprinkle over the walnuts and goat cheese. SO. DELICIOUS.