Beet and Goat Cheese Salad with Candied Walnuts (and how I lost my mind)

When I was about 5 or so, my mom made me eat a beet.  I had the kind of parents who made you clean your plate and we were having beets that night.  I am pretty sure they were the canned variety and I sat there with a beet in my mouth, refusing to swallow it, for at least a half an hour.  I thought they were so disgusting, I couldn't imagine letting it go down the hatch.  If I would have been thinking less like a 5 year old, maybe I would've just hurried and swallowed it and not savored the horrible taste for quite as long.  Instead, I turned it into a traumatic moment and have steered clear of beets, in any form, since that day.  

Bake 52: Baklava

 You will not find me complaining about having an excuse to make baklava.  If you have been around for a while, you know I already posted a recipe in December.  After tweaking this one, it's pretty similar to that recipe and I didn't really have to tweak that much.  It makes me think if I had this cookbook 3 years ago, it probably wouldn't taken me so many tries to find my perfect baklava.

Baklava

Last year, I didn't make baklava.  Because the year before I had spent several batches of phyllo dough and time trying to find "my favorite recipe," and then when we moved, somehow this recipe got boxed up in storage instead of making the journey with me.  FAIL.  Seriously.  Yay for a blog that will make it so that will NEVER happen again!  I was overjoyed to find that it didn't get swallowed up by all things in storage, never to be found.  Sometimes if we have a little faith, everything turns out okay.  Now if I could somehow call Bon Jovi and make sure he is, in fact, alive and well, life would be bliss.