… in 15 easy steps.
1. Wake up in your perfect Laura Ingalls Wilder attic-nook and immediately dart over to the window. With your hand upon the rocking chair, take a deep breath as you look out over the cascading greengreen mountains.
2. Plunge headlong down the Vertical Staircase of Terror, calling out good morning to all and sundry before making a beeline for the coffeepot.
3. Hug Jeniqua because she is marvellous, then follow her out into the kitchen garden that she’s been carefully creating and tending over recent months.
4. In the borrowed hat that makes you feel like Linnea in Monet’s Garden (do you remember that you even had the doll, oh so many years ago?), pick so much beetroot that your arms can barely hold the weight of the full basket.
5. In the kitchen with Jeniqua, discard the stems, peel, and then roughly chop the beetroot (even the teeny tiny-ones no bigger than your thumbnail), setting aside the leaves for Jeniqua’s ducklings. Think about the zucchini flowers you saw in the garden, but decide to leave those for another day.
6. Throw a great many ingredients into the soup-pot and set it to simmering, agreeing that the soup will henceforth be known as “borscht” purely because beetroot (or beets, if you’re American) is its star.
7. Acquiesce to the spontaneous decision that everyone at Lloyd’s farm should walk up the mountain to watch the sunset.
8. Watch the pink-golden-shimmering sun melt into the fluffy blue clouds below, gently, silkily.
9. Think about how gorgeous the sunset is.
10. Think about how the sunset reminds you of the final pages of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (the book, clearly, not the movie).
11. Think about how you are actually quite incredibly hungry.
12. Start to feel antsy. Hear that the rest of the group wants to keep walking up the mountain. Look longingly down the sloping road to where the borscht is waiting.
13. Salvation! Lloyd’s apple orchard! Fresh tangy juicy crunchy pink-skinned white-fresh little apple straight off the tree! You feel human again! Excitement! All the things! Exclamation mark!
14. Turn around and feel your heart flutter at the incandescent beauty of the flaming gold sunset; drink in the light as it etches the horizon beyond endless, undulating, billowing clouds.
15. Further up the mountain, toast the sunset with Jeniqua, Steve, Anna, and your drink of choice before skipping back down home again to finally, finally serve up magenta bowls of glorious perfect sunset borscht. You’ll find that it’s more delicious than you could ever have imagined.
The Perfect Sunset Borscht
Approximate recipe, to serve an approximate amount of people. Don’t you love it when I’m helpful?
- 1 onion, roughly chopped
- 2 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
- olive oil
- a mountain of beets, peeled and roughly chopped
- 2 sweet potatoes, peeled and roughly chopped
- 2-3 potatoes, peeled and roughly chopped
- 1 small apple from the orchard, just because you saw it on the counter, peeled and roughly chopped
- water
- cumin
- garam masala
- fresh thyme and lemon, to serve
- In a large heavy-based pot, sauté the onion and garlic in olive oil until softened.
- Throw in the basketful of beets as well as your sweet potato, potato, and the apple. Cover with water, and then stir in cumin and garam masala to taste (you can use any spice that sets your heart on fire, such as fennel, caraway, sprinkles…). Season with salt and pepper.
- Bring to the boil then simmer, partly covered, until all the veggies are cooked. Season again to taste, and then puree. (Recipe can be made up to this point and then stored until serving. Tastes even more miraculous the next day.)
- To serve, stir the pureed borscht over medium heat until warmed through. Serve garnished with thyme and wedges of lemon, to taste.
- Perfect, perfect sunset soup.
I’m submitting this to Healthy Vegan Friday #8, Ricki’s Wellness Weekend and Allergy Friendly Friday.
LOL perfect for an approximate amount of approximate people!
Such a pretty sunset! And then a pretty purple-red borscht to finish things off – sounds pretty perfect!
Hahaha oh man I love your description of the serving size. It’s just perfect
I do not tell a lie.
Hey hun, I’m featuring this recipe on Healthy Vegan Friday this week
Aw squish! Thank you!
This is the absolute most closest you’ve come to my heart of hearts in one post, dear Hannah. I will add that ‘ethereal’ belongs in here somewhere, because it’s quite fitting to the sentiments these photos inspire, and you haven’t used it in a while (I think).
Oh, to be a wandering WWOOFer.
I’ve been trying to hold back on using “ethereal”, “idyllic”, and “exquisite” in every post, for fear people will think I’m just being hyperbolic. But I’ve truly been enveloped in magic lately, and I’m so grateful.
I thought of you so often in the mountains; you truly would have felt your heart burst, had you been there. I hope you get to be a wandering WWOOFer soon. Seriously. Do it before it’s too late! xo
LOL about the serving size
It’s amazing how you’re still able to blog recipe and everything even when you’re overseas 
WELL DONE! Keep it up! ~
Thanks, slavemaster.
Glorious part of the world … The mountains and the sea. And a wonderful sunset. There’s something nice about seeing the sun set over the sea … Something we easterners don’t see a lot.
The borscht looks and sounds magnifique. Did you have purple fingers?
Ah, but no, we were watching the sun set into clouds, not into the sea. I joked, actually, that we could have driven down the mountain, back under the clouds, and watched the sun set again into the sea!
Less purple than brown fingers from the dirt! And they stayed so all through my time in the mountains *and* my two days in San Francisco. It was astonishing.
P.S. Do you remember my Linnea book and doll?
Of course I do … they were so lovely. (Look, answering from my laptop and voila, the link is there)
And voila, perhaps you might like to apologise to the daughter you implied was responsible somehow for your link problems?
I HAD THAT DOLL TOO! IT OVERTOOK MY LIFE. I’m pretty sure that doll/that book are the reason I ended up studying art history.
Also I miss you. Come home to me.
I so hoped someone, someone would know that book and doll. It gives my heart great joy to find that this person I hoped for was you.
I miss you back. Come here to me.
… excuse me for a moment while I breathe that view into my soul …
I’m so changing your mind about America totally and utterly.
Between you and Emma I’ll find myself wanting to move there soon!
(as long as I can stay this far away from the shiny lights and suffocating cities)
That’s very easy to do.
Seriously, that looks and sounds like my idea of heaven…. the garden, the scenery, the friends, food and sunshine. Envious much
Plus beets are just beautiful.
Honeymoon plan?
Ahh wondrous, to be experiencing all of those things! I also really miss harvesting beets. My favourite was when we would make bunches of red, golden and chioggia- what a colour palette!
That view of sunset is UNREAL.
The photos can’t do the sunset justice by a hundred thousand miles. It was incredible.
I’ve never had chioggia beetroot before. One day!
That soup is such a pretty colour and I love how the beetroots weren’t bought in a store but pulled fresh from a precious looking garden. I do hope you let us know what you made with the zucchini flowers (or ‘blossoms’ I think they call them in the USA) xx
Oops. We forgot about the zucchini flowers, but I will say that just-picked fresh zucchini is incredibly sweet and wonderful.
I am covetous of your borscht. Is covetous even a word? It’s at least approximately a word, which I think you would approve of.
I do, indeed, approve. 50 points towards life for you!
What a stunning sunset. Oh how I love a sunset.
The soup looks good, but I had a bad borscht experience as a child. Maybe I will have to give it another go.
I think this is likely the furthest thing from “real” borscht possible, so you stand a good chance of at least not hating it!
Love the way that looks! And I have everything on hand to do just that.
You lucky thing! I’m no longer in the mountains with a garden right outside the door.
Soup and sunset? Alliteration never sounded so calming
Cheers
Choc Chip Uru
Oh yum!
But more importantly, where was the accompanying vodka?!
Does gin count?
Oh my goodness how beautiful! And your soup. It’s soup season here too but my pumpkin effort last night was paltry compared to this. I had a beetroot mojito in a tops London bar this summer!!
Beetroot mojito!! I’m not usually one for cocktails, but dear heavens that sounds magical to me. (P.S. We’ve all had dodgy pumpkin soup experiences before. Just blame it on a bland pumpkin. It’s what I do.
)
Now this, darling, may be a tricky recipe for the rest of us to follow
But I think it deserves being tucked away as a worthy one nonetheless. Also – yay to pink skinned apples of salvation!
(Thanks, too for your thoughts on not writing or reading too much
I’m doing the things that matter most when time and mood allow, and working hard to shut off the internet world in between xo)
And by matter most, incidentally, I don’t mean work
The best soups come about by intuition, donchaknow? This recipe is therefore all you need.
P.S. I didn’t even assume you meant actual work! DON’T YOU DARE THAT’S AWFUL. The word “work” shouldn’t even exist during a honeymoon!
My good lord! She lives above the ocean with those views?!?! Borcht – ive been thinking about making that lately – Ive never made it! Crazy. But Ive been eating lots of beets lately and thinking now I need to make soup. I shall have to try this recipe.
At the moment she does; isn’t it killer? Teehee, if you figure out what constitutes “a mountain of beets”, please let me know. I have no idea myself how many we threw in there!
That sunset is GORGEOUS!
Dear Hannah,
Like you, I also believe that with the right company and atmosphere, a meal, no matter how simple, can turn into a life long memory. Glad to see you’re enjoying life there!
Enjoying it almost more than I can bear!
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amazing and so so simple!
thanks for sharing the recipe!
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