I have always loved beets, but I spent my pre-cooking years eat­ing them from salad bars. Sure, I knew what they looked like in the wild, I just had no idea how you did any­thing with them.

Until very recently, though, roast­ing beets was, sadly, a royal pain. I am a decent cook, I fol­low instruc­tions well, but when­ever I read a recipe for beets, I would come across a line like “and then the skins will slip right off” and I would be cov­ered in beet juice with the skins not budg­ing an inch.

Even my bible wasn’t clear­ing things up for me.

Fight­ing with your beets is espe­cially prob­lem­atic when your CSA sends you a hefty bunch every week. Last week­end, Ryan took over beet duty and made per­fect roasted beets: oven at 400, each beet scrubbed and indi­vid­u­ally wrapped in foil, oven for an hour.

And then, the skins slipped right off.

Last week we ate them with shal­lot vinai­grette and feta cheese along­side some heav­enly pulled pork. Tonight I loosely adapted Smit­ten Kitchen’s but­ter­milk dress­ing (skipped the chives, added some Pen­zeys ranch pow­der) and sliced some cel­ery for crunch. I wanted to take a photo but it was vetoed due to the some­what day-glo color combo.

Some­one was decid­edly not aware that pink and green is always in fashion.

Lilly Pulitzer Nadja dress here.

The chic charm­ers over at Mat­ters of Style recently wrote about their post­card col­lec­tions. Always look­ing for a way to nod to our loca­tion with­out resort­ing to faux-antique beach signs, I started search­ing Ye Olde Ebay for “Palm Beach.”

What I found was not exactly what I was expect­ing. A few Palm Beach post­cards, yes:

But also a whole lot of this:

Who’s that girl, you ask? Oh, just Palm Beach Caf­tan Bar­bie (offi­cial name: Palm Beach Breeze Bar­bie). She has a few friends, like Palm Beach Coral Bar­bie, who looks like she stepped out of a Slim Aarons photo, no?

Wait, what? I thought Lilly Pulitzer Bar­bie cov­ered this already:

Don’t worry, I have answers. (Note to self: exten­sive search­ing of the terms “Palm Beach” and “Bar­bie” is an inter­est­ing way to spend a morn­ing.) Mat­tel makes lim­ited edi­tion Bar­bies for col­lec­tors, many of which can be seen here. These are not dolls one sub­jects to hair­cuts (a most unfor­tu­nate fate that most of my Bar­bies suf­fered) or even prob­a­bly to remov­ing from the box.

Which is a real shame, because think of the sce­nar­ios one could come up with for this guy:

That’s Palm Beach Sugar Daddy Ken. Based on my PB expe­ri­ences, I’d say he needs to be about twice the age, and his accom­pa­ny­ing Bar­bie about 23. Also, Mat­tel, where’s the Bentley?

Some­times I have to take a moment and remind myself how lucky we are to live mere min­utes from this:

I’ve never tried Pinkberry. Or Red Mango. Or the zil­lion other yogurt joints that seem to be required to put some com­bi­na­tion of a fruit and a color in their name. Most frozen yogurt, hon­estly, kind of grosses me out. It always just tastes…fake. Good old dairy-aisle yogurt, on the other hand, I love. I grew up mix­ing honey, wheat germ and bananas into plain Dan­non. Our fridge almost always has at least one con­tainer of Fage. I will try almost any yogurt that I can get my hands on.

I finally got a taste of the tart froyo after we moved here at a shop with erratic hours called Organic Yogurt. Later, I tried Alle­gria in Coconut Creek. In an attempt to cor­ner the mar­ket on food trends of the past ten years, the store also sells cup­cakes: a genius com­bi­na­tion, as far as I’m con­cerned. Unfor­tu­nately, the cup­cakes suck. The frozen yogurt, though, is dandy.

Over the week­end, a tart yogurt crav­ing hit. We tried Organic Yogurt, only to dis­cover a For Rent sign in the win­dow. I fell asleep think­ing about the creamy treat. The next day, out run­ning errands, I fig­ured I’d get my fix at Forty Car­rots, the café inside Bloomingdale’s. It’s been a while since I’ve lived near a Bloomingdale’s, but I used to love get­ting a cup of yogurt and walk­ing around the beauty floor. Forty Car­rots, sadly, was out of the plain fla­vor and wasn’t sure when it would be back.

I picked up my phone and started googling. We drove out to a place that sup­pos­edly exists in West Boca and were met with another For Rent sign.

Today noth­ing was get­ting in my yogurt way. I found Lutz Delight (a hike, yes, but I was feel­ing adven­tur­ous). And? It was awe­some. Yogurt nir­vana: achieved. Now, how to con­vince the own­ers to open a shop in Boca?

This occurred to me in the park­ing lot of my (much-loved) YMCA: remem­ber a mil­lion years ago how you would some­times see non-convertible cars with cloth tops?

Young­sters, I’m talk­ing about these:

Sweet, right? Frankly, I’d kind of for­got­ten they existed at some point. I seem to remem­ber them as part of “spe­cial edi­tion” pack­ages, those cars (for some rea­son, Buick did this a lot) with scrolly type and a name on the side. A quick tum­ble through Craigslist con­firms this, as there seem to plenty of Buick Le Sabre Palm Beach Edi­tions out there, if anyone’s looking…

Back to my point: I see these tops on cars all the damn time down here. My sources say these became increas­ingly rare in the past ten years, with Lin­coln mak­ing one of the last ones in 2002. This can only mean one thing: peo­ple are tak­ing per­fectly good cars and hav­ing these roofs added to them.

Awe­some.

If you are not already read­ing House­martin, the supremely inspir­ing blog of a shopowner/florist, may I sug­gest that you add it to your RSS feeds stat? When I was plan­ning our wed­ding, every photo she posted of a bridal bou­quet made me hope that she would sud­denly aban­don Port­land for KC so I could carry one of those beauts down the aisle. Her store is on (my very, very long) list of Port­land to-dos.

And I can’t stop re-reading this post because it per­fectly cap­tures what I’d love our home to look like: bohemian, beachy, chic and com­fort­able. (Photo by Lisa Warninger for ink & peat.)

There are a lot of things I miss about Kansas City, but a big one is def­i­nitely food. (Mr. TRF elu­ci­dates here.)

I miss KC’s empha­sis on locally sourced ingre­di­ents, and the abil­ity to buy local milk and eggs at almost every gro­cery store. For the amount of food that can be grown in Florida, it’s hard to find these items with­out a lit­tle dig­ging. (Actu­ally, I’m still search­ing for local eggs and/or milk. Despite rumors that they exist, I haven’t turned them up.)

Last year we joined a CSA and sud­denly, we were free from Whole Foods’ oft-uneven offer­ings, Publix’s weird shrink-wrapped pro­duce and the dis­ap­point­ment that is the local green­mar­ket scene (I’m look­ing at you, Del­ray Beach). Behold our food deliv­ery one day from last year:

Last week­end, we bun­dled up (it was around 60 and windy, we’ve gone soft) to tour our farm. Walk­ing up and down rows of assorted greens, herbs and toma­toes, I found myself squeal­ing in recog­ni­tion as if spot­ting a long-forgotten celeb. “I know those beets!”

I guess you can take the girl out of farm coun­try, but you can’t take the farm coun­try out of the girl.

I caved at Pub­lix and bought the newest Peo­ple mag­a­zine a few days ago. It’s the one with Celine Dion dis­cussing her fer­til­ity strug­gles and going through IVF. Her hus­band tells Peo­ple that they’re “not really” con­sid­er­ing adoption.

With­out get­ting into a dis­cus­sion about her age (41), her husband’s age (68) or fer­til­ity angst, let’s instead won­der why they’re “not really” con­sid­er­ing adop­tion. I sum­ma­rized this all for my hus­band (because that is the kind of good wife I am, keep­ing him up on celebrity gos­sip), and he came up with a good one. Mr. Celine Dion (oh fine, he has a name: René Angélil) needs a baby with some genetic ties to him so that he can remain alive.

Looks like a guy who would eat his bébé, right?

The good news is that, addi­tions to la famille or not, there is likely ample room in their 9,825-square-foot home in Jupiter Island which per­haps they will con­sider rent­ing to the Reluc­tant Floridians.

There are two pools. I’m sure they’ll let us have one.

You know how when you’re look­ing for love, you go on a string of crappy dates, but when you’re all “I am dat­ing myself” you meet some­one great? (Dis­claimer: This has not actu­ally hap­pened to me, but I hear it has hap­pened to oth­ers.) That is sort of my new (as of today) feel­ing about the house hunt. I am not going to date my rental (because that would be weird), but I am going to chill out and let the house come to me. In the mean­time, I am going to dec­o­rate the house in my mind, because that always makes me feel better.

Since Mr. TRF and I have a hate-hate rela­tion­ship with all of the sofas in our house, we’ll have to get new ones. This hot piece of cushi­ness ain’t cheap, but hey, it’s not the bazil­lion dol­lar ver­sion from George Smith, ($12K for a sofa? Who does that?) so in my mind it’s a bargain.

I’d like to acknowl­edge our beachy loca­tion with­out force-feeding you starfish, so maybe a few coral pil­lows to scat­ter about? Yup.

Only one hundo per pil­low? Rad. Let’s get four!

When I say I love surf­ing, what I really mean is “I enjoy sit­ting on my tush and watch­ing doc­u­men­taries about surf­ing.” There­fore, a lit­tle Leroy Gran­nis is in order.

How about a com­plete over­haul of our bed­ding, start­ing with a bunch of Kerry Cas­sill love­li­ness?

Maybe mix in a lit­tle John Rob­shaw for good measure?

YES.

OK, I’m tired from all that fake shop­ping. Time for some­thing I can afford: a latte.

From a casual glance at the news, the real estate sit­u­a­tion in Florida comes off as fairly dire. Four in ten South Florida mort­gage hold­ers are under­wa­ter; The tri-county area was ranked tenth in the nation for fore­clo­sure fil­ings last year; gloom; doom; etc.

So some­one tell me why the house that was listed on Mon­day, that I looked at 24 hours later, on Tues­day after­noon, was under con­tract that night.