Shortbread Cookies and Beets

One of my friends and I (though I cannot remember which friend now) were discussing beets recently. Yes, the vegetable. And we both agreed that beets were more of a autumn/winter food. Is it just our bodies adapting to ancient hunter/gatherer practices? In the winter in older days, the only vegetables available were either dried in the summer and stored and then reconstituted when they were going to be eaten or else they were the types that could actually be found during those seasons...i.e. roots and such (example: beets). At any rate, I realized that, yes, it is true...only sometimes do I get a real hankering for beets and the some-times usually only come in the later months of the year. I'm never walking around in 100 degree heat wondering why I'm not having beets for dinner. But tonight, when I was thinking about which vegetable to cook with my dinner, the can of beets that has been sitting in the pantry for gods-know-how-long was basically calling my name. And after eating them, it tasted like the best thing I could have ever eaten.

And another thing....

Nothing makes ya feel like a kid again like chocolate fudge-striped shortbread cookies. You know the kind with the hole in the middle? I used to put them on my tiny fingers and eat around the edges until i just had a small ring of chocolate and shortbread left, trying the whole time not to break the cookie or make the ring too small that it would have a gap in the circle. The older I got, the harder it got to actually put them on my fingers...but even the last time I bought these type of cookies I could still fit the hole over my pinky finger. Sadly, the cheap generic brand from Publix did not have a big enough hole to even fit over my pinky. Oh well. I still ate four tonight after my dinner, and thought, "Man, these make me feel like I'm 10 again." Then I thought--proving that the adult side of my brain was still in control--"You know what would make these better? If the chocolate was mint flavored." I love mint flavored chocolate. But then I realized that adding mint to these cookies would make them less appealing to most children who don't like mint beause it reminds them of toothpaste, and very few children actually like to brush their teeth. I also realized that it was the adult side of me that wanted mint chocolate shortbread cookies...read: Mint Milanos. Somehow Mint Milanos seem like the kind of cookie that only adults get to eat, not only because they are rather expensive for cookies but also because you get far fewer of them in a bag than when you buy a bag of Chips Ahoy or Keebler cookies.

I love shortbread cookies!

At any rate, I didn't mean for this post to be even this long...so laters.