They say that the road to recovery begins with the first step: acceptance. The funny thing about being in a new relationship after being single for a long period of time is how much it teaches you about yourself and what a bad person you could potentially be. When I was single, one of my favorite stupid and reckless things that I used to enjoy doing to blow off steam was to go to a bar downtown, knock back a few whiskey's and entertain my girl friends by picking a fight with a guy twice my size. I was an incredibly stupid single girl with a bad temper and probably a drinking problem. I stopped drinking as regularly a while ago, but my temper hasn't completely gone away, nor has my love of drunk and disorderly behavior. I would have never realized how badly I need to deal with both if I hadn't started dating someone seriously.

I'm learning that part of being in a relationship is being able to accept the responsibility you have for the other person's feelings, especially when a fight erupts. I wouldn't say that my boyfriend and I fight. I would say that we are discovering the things about each other that annoy us to the point of distraction. The first time this happened, I exacerbated the situation by acting like a feral cat going into fight or flight mode. The claws came out and I attempted to give him a vicious tongue lashing, followed by a sleepless night, and then an afternoon of vodka and orange juice. I do not recommend this course of action if you are expecting your lover to apologize to you, which is what he would have done had I not gotten so drunk I found myself puking well into the night. I take full responsibility for that one, and believe me, I learned many lessons; the most obvious one being that I'm definitely too old to be drinking that much.

Now, instead of saying mean things and getting drunk when these moments come up, I've focused on cooking. My emotional palate looks a lot like the homeland security advisory system. At the more peaceful, non-threatened end of the spectrum, I make a lot of miso soups with seaweed and tofu, or salads with avocados and cucumbers. The other night, the boyfriend and I had a misunderstanding, leading to frustrated feelings, which could have very well resulted in another vodka-induced outburst, but I decided to control myself and headed to my grocery store instead. I was in high alert mode: I needed to eat red. As red as I could possibly get. I bought some blood red beets and wanted to just set them on fire.

Broiled Beets

Ingredients:

 

1. as many beets as you want, sliced 1/4 inches each
2. 4 cloves of garlic, chopped
3. drizzle of olive oil

Directions:

1. Fire up the broiler
2. Toss the beets, oil & garlic together in a broiling pan
3. Broil the beets until tender, about 10 minutes, but keep an eye on them.
4. Enjoy!

I also wanted to try the beet greens. I'd heard they were bitter, so I wanted to make some sort of sautéed bitter greens dish.

Beet Greens

 

Ingredients:

1. stalks and leaves of the beets, chopped into smaller, edible pieces.
2. 1 small onion
3. 1 clove garlic
4. 1 drizzle of olive oil

Directions:

1. Blanch the greens in a boiling pot of salted water for 10 minutes, until the stalks are tender.
2. Drain the greens and press until they are dry.
3. Sauté the garlic and onions with the oil in a skillet until the onions are transparent.
4. Add the blanched beet leaves and sauté.
5. Enjoy!

I served the beets on top of wild rice, and also a Red Machine Naked Smoothie with additional omega-3s, and afterwards, felt very satisfied. I saw the boyfriend a few days later, and he more than made up for whatever it was I was annoyed with by treating me to a Saturday morning round of Frolf (or disc golf, as he likes to call it). We were back to being adorably happy together, chasing after frisbees and squirrels on the Frolf course, the left over beets sitting cool in the fridge.