Our CSA has delivered beautiful beets in our box for the past several weeks.
Truth be told, I’m not a huge fan of beets. I like them well enough, but I wouldn’t ordinarily buy them. However, one thing I really like about being a member of a CSA is that we fairly regularly get vegetables that I wouldn’t buy myself which, I like to think, forces me to expand my vegetable repertoire. That can’t be bad, right?
We’ve been eating a lot of greens lately due to our CSA. I figured there must be a way to eat the beet greens in addition to the roots (it seemed a shame to just toss the greens in the compost bin). So I did a quick Internet search and found this recipe for roasted beets and sautéed beet greens. In this recipe, the whole beet roots are tossed in some olive oil and cooked, covered, in a shallow baking dish or roasting pan for 45-60 minutes in a 350 degree oven. Meanwhile, the greens are sautéed in a little olive oil with some garlic and onion. Though the recipe advertises that you can make two separate side dishes – one of roasted beets and the other of sautéed greens — I really wanted to combine them for simplicity’s sake. So I did. I put the roasted beets on top of the greens, and added some feta cheese and mint since I had both and was feeling fancy. The result was delicious.
Beets are like a little wonder food. The roots are high in all sorts of vitamins and minerals such as folate, vitamin C, various B vitamins, manganese, potassium, and iron. Beet greens are even more miraculous, packed with vitamins A, E, and K, calcium and protein. Yup, pretty much if you eat a serving of roasted beets on top of beet greens you can reach for that pint of Ben and Jerry’s with absolutely no guilt (although you’ll be flying high because beets, it turns out, are also packed with sugar).
A couple of years ago, Charlie ate some pickled beets at our neighbors’ house and seemed to like them. I was astonished given that he refuses almost every new food. Since then, I’ve tried a few times to prepare beets for Charlie in the hopes that he’ll develop a completely unexpected love of beets. I’ve tried pickling them for him, but he hasn’t touched them. I offered him some roasted beets; nope. But I figure I have many more weeks of CSA beet deliveries ahead of us, so I’ll keep trying.
Paula adores beets. Just adores them. I….have a harder time. Though recently I’ve discovered that I do like beet juice, providing that there are a lot of other juices in there as well. There is a natural foods store near here that has a juice bar, and they make a juiced drink called Karma: beets, celery, apple, lots of carrots, lemon and ginger. The entire drink turns bright red because of the beets and it’s very lemony and gingery and altogether delicious.
You could deep-fry them for him!
Everything tastes good deep-fried, just ask the folks at the State Fair! (yeah, yeah- I guess it would defeat the purpose)
Deep-fried beets. Hmm, I wonder how that would taste. I can only imagine biting into them and all the red juices exploding everywhere.
Yum. Offer them 10-20 times in a row, and only then can you give up on him liking them. One of my food allergy cookbooks has a recipe for a beet “dessert”….involving grated beets and whipped cream. Sounds gross but doesn’t he love whipped cream?
Charlie certainly does love whipped cream. I tried giving him raw beets today on the theory that maybe he’d like them since he adores crunchy food. He removed them from his plate as if the sight of them offended him. He did the same thing with the kale chips. But he shoveled down the apples and mac and cheese, so I suppose I should be grateful. I’m going to keep trying with the beets and the kale as long as they both keep getting delivered in the CSA box.
That’s funny, I just recently blogged about missing my CSA. I never did succeed in getting the kids to eat beets or greens, but my husband and I did enjoy the beet greens once I learned how to season them. We did get a little sick of beets after a while, but they can be frozen or given away when there’s a bumper crop.
I never considered freezing the beets — thanks for the great tip!