Beets

This is a post about beets.  I did not grow up eating beets, nor did I have any desire to eat one.  They always sort of made me think of blood and Russian grandmothers (yeah, I know it's a terrible stereotype). I became more open to the idea of beets about the time I started noticing them on the menus of nice restaurants, but I was never brave enough to order anything containing them.  It was only when my mom and I ordered the tasting menu at the restaurant of the winery we were visiting, that I actually forced myself to try one.  One of the courses was a salad with baby beets on it, and they weren't bad.  Still it was several years before I bought and cooked them myself.

This fall, just after we moved here I decided to make a pasta dish with root vegetables and cheese.  That week I decided to go to the farmer's market for all the produce I needed.  I had never been to the Dane County Farmer's Market before, and it was a terrible day to go, because it was raining.  The recipe called for a mixture of red and golden beets, but only I didn't see any golden beets, so I bought a bunch of red beets, thinking that we had passed all the stands.  But then I saw a vendor selling bunches with both red and yellow beets.  I made the pasta, and threw out the rest of the beets, not knowing what to do with them.

Despite this less than positive experience with beets, I decided to plant them in our garden.  Or rather I decided James would plant them in our garden, mostly because I thought it would be hilarious to tease him about being a beet farmer like Dwight Schrute from the Office. Also, they were free at the seed fair, so it's not like we'd be out any money if they didn't work out.  I decided to go with chioggia beets, which are a red and white striped variety that sort of look like an advertisement for Target when you cut them open..  I figured they would remind less of both blood and Russian grannies, since I've mainly seen them in fancy restaurants and cooking magazines.

Our first harvest.

Beets have actually turned out to be the perfect crop for our garden.  They've grown really well, probably better than anything else in our garden.  We have lost some of them to small creatures that like to nibble on them, and even smaller ones that like to live in them, but there are so many it hardly matters.  What's more, they are really two veggies in one, since the greens are also edible.  I made a surprisingly delicious beet and beet green gratin from the New York Times, and I've added the greens to chicken curry and used them as a topping for baked potatoes.

Half-eaten beet and beet green gratin.  You can see the target pattern on the beets.

We still have many more beets in the ground and the refrigerator.  I've found that keeping them in a bag in the crisper drawer is absolutely essential, because otherwise they get soft and the leaves wilt.  Although I was initially hesitant about growing beets, I would say it has been a successful experiment, and we will probably grow them again next year.