Warm Golden Beet Salad with Greens and Almonds

1 bunch beets, both tops and roots
Olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 cloves garlic, minced
4 ounces goat cheese, crumbled
2/3 cup toasted almond slivers

Heat the oven to 425�F. Line a 9-inch square baking pan or cake tin with a big square of foil, large enough to complete enclose the beet roots. Lightly rinse the beet roots to remove any really clumpy dirt and pat them dry. Place them in the foil square and lightly drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. Fold up the foil and crease to seal. Bake the beets for 60 minutes or until they can be just pierced with a fork. Set aside to cool.

Meanwhile, chop the beet greens into bite-size ribbons. Discard the stalks between the roots and where the leaves start, but chop the leaf ribs along with the leaves. Rinse thoroughly to remove all traces of dirt and grit. In a large skillet, heat a drizzle of olive oil over medium heat and add the garlic. Cook on low for about 5 minutes or until the garlic is golden and fragrant. Add the chopped leaves and stir to coat with the garlic. Cook on medium-low for about 10 minutes or until the leaves are soft and tender. Remove from the heat.

When the beets are cool, rub them with a paper towel to remove the skin. Then chop into bitesized pieces and toss with the cooked greens, goat cheese, and almonds. Taste and season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve warm or cold. (This also makes an excellent pressed sandwich filling, especially with some extra goat cheese.)

No link to a photo in your port. to illustrate? 

I'd be interested in hearing the answer too.  I'm in the same boat with only a driver's license for ID and I was considering signing up and submitting until I saw the 2-ID issue come up.

They are taking it outside with an event in NYC this weekend.  No telling what will come of it, but it's an interesting way to get fresh input and maybe the added publicity and name recognition will help lure in some curious folks that become buyers. http://photohackday.org/  Having their name plastered on the NASDAQ screen is one way to make a splash.  Could we submit that to iStock editorial?  

They are trying everything they can do to drop from the top tier down to middle tier - almost there....

Too new at this to have valid comparisons to the previous year but up from June and overall a decent month. 

SS - 39%
ISP - 28%
DT - 12%
123rf - 12%
FT - 4%
CanStockPhoto - 2%
with a handful of smaller sites adding 1% each.

Highlights include a big jump in sales at 123rf that's continuing into August, first sale at Stockfresh and a nice increase in sales at iSP at the end of the month.

The IS relevancy factor is self policing.  Poor keywords are weeded out automatically.

What's relevant, good or poor is subject to the whims of the CV too unfortunately.  As an independant I have images on several sites that show what search words were used to find downloaded images.  I have a series of images where a few keywords relating to the concept were accepted on some images, rejected on others at IS.  I had an ongoing discussion with the CV powers-that-be to update the CV to disambiguate for these words and the ultimate decision was that they stripped it from all my images because they deemed it to be not relevant.  So I know it's a keyword that buyers are using to find and purchase my images, but on IS those images get much lower DL's because the keywords are not allowed.

I've got a small portfolio so I expect sporadic sales but I have seen some trends that are different from the norm for me. 
SS has been strong and steady but I'm seeing more US and Central/South American sales and less from Europe which has been strong for me in the past - my last 10 on the map are heavily clustered in the US and nothing in Europe.  More OD sales than I've seen in the past too.
Dreamstime was very strong the first third of the month (with some nice credit sales too) but has stopped dead for the past week. 
Fotolia was dead in the beginning, picking up the past 10 days with steady sales (but small subs). 
123RF has really taken off with sales every few days, multiples on a day - just a few pennies behind IS, it's my #3 for the month so far.
IS is following it's usual odd pattern - I see a string of no-sale days followed by multiple sales on the same day, always 4 -5 days apart, never the same day of the week.  Dollar amount is less than half of last month
Got my first sale at Stockfresh too!

@ Jsnover - I think that's the kind of info they really want while things are in Beta phase.

On the left of the screen, you should see a green feedback link.  You can use that to report the kind of issues you're experiencing.

I'll give them my feedback too - I'm not getting any graph lines.  I tried entering Christmas, Thankgiving, and Pumpkin just to see if maybe it had been the words I was entering but I'm still not seeing graph lines.  Windows XP and IE8

I find it's not unusual to have images from multiple dates reviewed together too, so while the oldest might sit awhile waiting for review, later batches get moved through quickly.  I just had images from 5 different upload dates between June 20 and July 3 reviewed and accepted (maybe one was that bazzillionth image???)

I submitted 4 images on June 4th and they were accepted a couple of days ago. I've always found them to take 7 - 14 days for review.

Quote from: klsbear on June 14, 2011, 09:18

Maybe they factor "newest" using newest within categories too, not just strict date calculations.  So it could be that they show the newest exclusive image, newest non-exclusive, newest agency, newest vetta, and any other mystery categories they chose to include in the algorithim, giving heavier weight to the exclusives, vetta, agency, even though they are older than the new "lower tier" images.  That would account for "new" images with a wide range of dates.

Then that would be a redefining of "File Age", wouldn't it? LOL

In the real world, yes, but this is iStock's own bizzaro world with it's own convoluted logic!  The scary part is that my brain was starting to follow that possible logic.  I need an intervention!

Okay, I just did it again, and it was the same. On the bottom of page 5 (200 images per page) there are two images of a woman silhouetted with a horse in a barn that know are from almost a year ago. I immediately recognized them because I know the photographer, the location, and the person in the photo. They are from July of 2010. And then right next to them are photos that are dated April 2011.

Maybe they factor "newest" using newest within categories too, not just strict date calculations.  So it could be that they show the newest exclusive image, newest non-exclusive, newest agency, newest vetta, and any other mystery categories they chose to include in the algorithim, giving heavier weight to the exclusives, vetta, agency, even though they are older than the new "lower tier" images.  That would account for "new" images with a wide range of dates.

Is it just me, or has the thumbs down been removed from the Istock 2012 rc targets thread?  I know I saw it earlier today.

Why have the thumbs up/down functionality if you are not going to allow people to use it to express their dissatisfaction?

Definately gone - I saw it earlier today too and got a chuckle from the fact that it was getting the thumbs down.