BEET BREAD PUDDING

One of my favourite foods of late summer are beets. Besides the traditional preserves of pickled beets and plain canned beets, here is a favourite recipe.

Beet Bread Pudding can be substituted as a stuffing and this year I cooked it as the dressing with a turkey dinner. The colour is wonderful although the picture is a rather poor reflection of that.

Ingredients:
cooked beets
bread, dried
onion
a bit of chicken stock
seasoning: salt, pepper, then it's up to you. In this version I used italian because that is what I had on hand. You could also use basil, savoury, marjoram etc.

I simply combine:
5 - 6 cups torn dry bread
2 cups chopped/diced cooked red beets
1/2 cup diced onion
1 or 2 eggs, slightly beaten
a bit of stock to moisten
seasoning to taste

Just mix it all and put in a greased baking dish (i used a loaf pan this time) and bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes

Turkey Drumsticks

While wandering though the aisles of the local grocery store today I noticed, in the meat cooler, turkey drumsticks. Two in a package for around $2.60. I'm thinking it's a pretty good deal but I'm not sure just how I'm going to cook them. When I got home I searched a few recipes online but didn't see anything that caught my fancy. After some thought I decided to baste them with pesto.

I washed the breasts and dried them off a bit. What this really means is that I shook the excess water off. I trimmed the loose skin off then put them onto a pie plate and slathered a heaping tablespoon of bottled (store bought) pesto all over them. I put just enough water in the pan to wet the bottom and covered the whole thing snugly with tin foil. Into the oven for about 2 hours at 325 degrees F. I did not uncover them the whole time and in fact forgot they were in the oven until I could smell them.  I took them out and carefully removed the tin foil and set them to rest for 10 or 15 minutes. I had already eaten dinner so I just sampled them. Gotta say that they are more than good, in fact kind of awesome. They turned out very moist, tender and juicy with a very gentle hint of the pesto. I think if you do not have pesto you could use a salad dressing or BQ sauce and it would be fine. 

It could be eaten torn with some rice or noodles or a traditional style turkey dinner or served cold with  a chunk of dark bread, pickles and potato salad if it's too hot to cook.