Borscht

Two new and tasty recipes in one week! We're on a roll. This one is adapted from The Frugal Gourmet On Our Immigrant Ancestors by Jeff Smith, the Frugal Gourmet. I have a couple of cookbooks by him - this one and one on American folk cooking. They are both really good; I have learned a lot from these books, and he makes use of lots of traditional foods. His books are the where I have gotten the most practice making things with new and different cuts of meat, and he uses a lot of stock. Even the non-traditional items in his recipes are easily edited to make them even healthier. Instead of cooking cabbage into the soup, I omitted cabbage and served the soup with lots of home-made sauerkraut. The original recipe also calls for lamb stew meat, but we bought 1/4 beef recently, so I used ground beef and heart.

Borscht
1 lb. ground beef
2 oz. ground beef heart (taste is not distinguishable in a soup and is good for you!)
1 onion, chopped
1 qt. stewed tomatoes (these were frozen from our garden this summer)
3 very large beets, peeled and chopped
3 quarts home-made beef stock
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
juice of 1/2 lemon
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper
sauerkraut
sour cream

Brown meat and onion. Add tomatoes, beets, stock, vinegar, lemon juice, bay leaves, salt, and pepper. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until beets are tender.
Serve with plenty of sauerkraut and cream (if you are able to have cream.)