Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

There are a few recipes out there for beet "carpaccio" (roasted beets sliced very thinly) done different ways. I made a version topped with a caper/chive/onion/egg/olive oil/S&P mixture that I really enjoyed. Link if you're curious. It was good over arugula but enjoyable on its own as well.

@duncan: Set your oven to 350 to 400 degrees. Rinse the beets but don't peel or cut. It's important to wrap the beets individually in aluminum foil; that way, they'll steam as they roast, and the skin will peel off quickly and easily by hand when you've finished the roasting and allowed the beets to cool.

Roasting can take up to an hour but with small beets it's hard to tell. To test doneness, just stick a knife into the largest beet. When the knife passes through easily (like through semi-soft butter), the beets are done.

One note: you should put a pan covered with aluminum foil under the beets. Once you've poked holes in them, they'll leak very sugary juice onto the bottom of your oven, which caramelizes and is extremely hard to clean.

Our Brasilian friend was born in Italy. His mother's food sets the standard for all others, and very few pass. He never passes up an opportunity to visit someone who's in the Albert Einstein Hospital in Sao Paulo. The pasta in the restaurant is wonderful, he says.

The best meal I ever had while in the hospital was the piece of rib roast and homemade coconut cake that my MIL made and brought to me after the birth of my daughter:-)

That same daughter spent 45 days in Thomas Jefferson Hosp. in Philly for testing that led up to brain surgery and recovery. She had no dietary restrictions and her food was pretty good. The cafeteria for the visitors was just plain awesome. That was 11 years ago and thank God, I can't tell you what it is like today.

@veryculinary there is nothing more frightening than a sick child and I feel for your fear and concern. A three year old isn't as articulate about their pain. My daughter was 20 and you might have thought that I would have been more confident for her. Let's just hope that you don't have to spend any more time in hospital with her or for yourself.

Pizza. Beets+Goat Cheese+Basil.

Unfortunately I've had 2 hosiptal stays in my lifetime... and by far the best stuff they make are the creams for breakfast - oatmeal, cream of wheat, cream of corn (crema de maiz), cream of rice... super good hands down.

However, their perspective on what a vegetarian meal is has a lot to be desired for... they told me: "The pieces of chicken are super, super small... so there should not be any problem for you, right?" as if being vegetarian had anything to do with the size of the pieces of meat in my food... pathetic!!!

In 2006 we grabbed a chicken salad sandwich while visiting someone at a hospital it was so good I went back and got another to take home with me.

I work in a hospital and honestly the cafeteria food can be quite tasty. It can be awful now and then as well. As an employee, I find the meals I eat at work to be a good value for the money. I was also a patient there twice over the last few months and found the food served to me as a patient to be vile. I suppose it was the bland/liquid diet I was put on to ease me back into eating after having surgery, but honestly, brown water, supposedly broth, didn't work for me.

I say ~ "different strokes for different folks."

I had a grey cat wedding cake, but (and this still kills me to this day) I forgot to take a picture of Dexter napping on the cake. I served the wedding cake anyway, but I never told the bride and groom as they were dog people.

Goodness--who is eating all those pies?? I would bake a lot more than I do, but in my small lacking-a-sweet-tooth household, the goods would just sit there!

A good friend of mine had a "pie shower" for her baby shower a few months ago. We had about 6-8 different pies, a veggie & cheese tray to round it out, coffee and punch. Wasn't what I would have chosen - I'm on the cake side of this war - but it turned out really well, and who were we to tell an eight-month pregnant woman that she couldn't have pie at her baby shower if that's what she wanted?

@mhirscch - thats so romantic.
@veryculinary - Awesome idol. Would you ever take on a similar task?