Tomorrow we gather together to give thanks,

to give thanks for our homes, our families, the food on our tables, and
the freedom to enjoy our homes, our families, and to share the food on our tables.

This past weekend, while Marash Girl was in New York City, she invited her son and his friends to Kafana, a Serbian restaurant on Avenue C in New York's Lower East Side. Her favorite dish at that restaurant was their Beet Salad.  What?  Uncooked beets in a salad, you ask?  Marash Girl had never tasted fresh beet salad before, but she loved it, so she decided to fight the crowds at her local green grocer's yesterday and try to recreate the salad on her own.  She bought a gigantic beet (probably one pound in and of itself), thinking it would be easier to prepare, less difficult to peel.  Wrong.  Once peeled, the beet was almost impossible to cut through.  [Better to try this recipe with several small beets.] Here is what she did.  She peeled the beet, sliced it into strips (with Marash Boy's assistance) and shredded the beet, using her Cuisinart with the appropriate shredding attachment.  To the now shredded beets, she added olive oil, a good wine vinegar that had had a garlic clove sitting in it for a week or two, and Kosher salt.  That was it.  She tested her efforts by serving the Beet Salad to Marash Boy who is not a beet enthusiast.  "This tastes like a relish," he said as he took a second helping.

As it turns out, the salad Marash Girl ate at Kafana's was not a fresh beet salad, but rather a fresh Celery Root and Beet Salad, and so the salad Marash Girl created was her own, and not at all a recreation of the salad she had eaten at Kafana's.  Next trip to the green grocer's she'll have to check out the Celery Root and try again.  But in the meantime, she and her guests (and, perhaps, dear reader, you and your guests) will enjoy the fresh beet salad all weekend . . . or for as long as it lasts . . .