Friday 16 January 2009

Take The Beet From Your Ground Cut The Grapes From Your Vine

Friday Faff: Bandits, Blow-ups, and Beets Edition

Bandits:

I haven't heard anything from my bank yet but I'm not surprised. They have a two week period to complete their investigation so I'm guessing I won't hear from them until the 26th. I'm trying not to worry. I haven't written my strongly-worded letters yet because I still feel shouty. Shouty and annoyed. I had to change my PIN and it is really messing with me. Hi, my name is Hillary and I do not love change.

Blow-ups:

I refrained from eating my body weight in chocolate. Things are still a bit prickly at home but it's nothing a little homemade pizza, funny movies, and chocolate ice cream won't fix. Hi, my name is Hillary and I am old and boring and prefer to spend Friday night on my couch.

Beets:

The reason I'm forcing myself to eat beets 12 times this year (1 down! 11 more to go) is because I feel like I am not as responsible as I should be when it comes to my fruit and vegetable consumption. Basically, I latch onto fruits and vegetables that I like and ignore the rest. I can pretend that I'm a healthy eater because I had vegetables for dinner but how healthy is it, really, to eat nothing but sweet potatoes for a week? And then after a week, I'm bored of sweet potatoes and move onto something else. It's ridiculous. My goal with the beets is to get my mind to accept that it's okay to eat food that you like but it's also okay to force yourself to eat food that you don't like. When I was a kid, my mom made me eat everything she served. It didn't matter that beets made me want to vomit - if she cooked beets, I was eating beets. I find myself being overly casual with my eating habits now, to make up for the rigid eating habits forced on me when I was a kid. If I want to drink nothing but coffee all morning, I call it breakfast. If I want to eat chocolate for lunch, I let myself. I'm not saying that I need to eat beets every day but I do feel like I need to be a bit stricter with how I view food. Hi, my name is Hillary and I have food issues.

The beets I made were roasted. Everything I read said to leave the skins on while roasting, to preserve the nutrients, so I just gave them a good scrub and cut the tops off. I covered them with olive oil, salt, minced garlic and fresh rosemary. I roasted them in a foil packet for an hour until they were mushy and then peeled them.

I am intrigued by pickled beets. Can someone describe them to me? Are they pickled like pickles? I love pickles. Do they come in a jar? Do they taste like non-pickled beets or is the beet-flavour (aka dirt) masked?

I haven't decided how February's beets will be prepared but I'm leaning towards borscht. Does anyone have a recipe they want to share?

16 comments:

  1. Pickled beets do not taste like pickles. I think they taste like grandparent food - bland, kind of mushy, a little weird. I don't think they're particularly healthy because of the pickling process, but I could be wrong.

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  2. Nothing sounds more unappetizing to me than borscht, but I applaud your attempt to introduce new food into your life. I need to do the same thing as I have a bit of a laissez faire attitude towards food. Although I've never had them any other way and can't imagine I'd like them very much, I can attest to the yumminess of pickled beets. If you find them, try making a salad of them with Mandarin orange slices and crumbled goat cheese, with some kind of citrus vinaigrette. Yum!

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  3. They DO come in a jar. They don't taste anything like pickles, but they are yummy. I don't know if you have this company in Canada, but I like the Libby's ones.

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  4. I am not a huge beet fan either, but if you sprinkle roasted beets with vinegar (I like red wine vinegar) after peeling and let them sit for 30 minutes before eating, it helps a LOT.

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  5. I can't stand beets. When I was living with my dad and step-mom, if beets were in anything, I would carefully transfer them to my dad's plate (cuz that's what parents are for)...and he's carefully transfer them to his wife's plate.

    Deer beets,
    Please stop tasting like ass.
    Love, Hillary and Megan

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  6. You are a way stronger woman than I am. The way I look at it is ... if I'm eating vegetables at all, I'm being healthy. And BECAUSE I was forced to eat foods I didn't like in childhood, I choose to only eat what I like as an adult. I can't force myself to eat stuff that's gonna make me puke.

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  7. my dad says the same thing about beets: that they taste like dirt. they taste so UNdirty to me! juicy and sweet and.. i don't know... not like dirt? i like them just cooked & sliced, but i'm guessing that is exactly how you DON'T want to eat them :-P

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  8. lol! Oh my gosh! All the anti-beeticism!

    Pickled beets (I disagree with your first commenter) DO taste more like pickles. They are tangy, they should be soft but not mushy, and you can get them in slices in a glass jar - they're actually with the pickles in the store. I would have perogies for dinner and have some pickles beets along side them - you'll be fine, I swear!

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  9. Eating pickled beets is not the healthiest option for veggies, but for me it's a nice sugar-craving curber. Pickled beets do have a beet-y taste, but they're both very sweet and have a strong vinegar taste, too. You can get them pickled whole or sliced (I prefer them sliced) in a very purple jar in the pickle aisle. They're just like any other pickled vegetable, really: dunked in brine.

    We used to grow beets in your backyard, and in the summertime we'd have a beet salad once a week. My mom would peel and slice the beets, and cook them with a dash of horseradish, vinegar, and oil. Mix in some green beans and radishes, and voilĂ . Whatever beets were leftover at the end of the summer were pickled.

    Good luck eating more things, even if you don't like it much. Our parents did us right by forcing us to try new things and really add variety to our eating habits rather than just sticking to the handful of foods we like and ignoring everything else!

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  10. I, too, have food issues, but you could not PAY ME to eat beets.

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  11. I really thought the second one said blow-job! hahaha

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  12. Pickled beets are not so good (I'm so pick) and actually don't taste anything like pickles. If they did, I'd be eating them.

    I hope your banks sorts this all out soon. And I hope they catch the fart face who did this to you.

    In the meantime, I really hope you do have a good weekend full of only smiles. :)

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  13. Hillary with two LLs, have you considered joining a CSA? Then you can sign up for someone else to pack you a box of organic fruits and veggies. You'll get super healthy shit, it'll be in season, local, and you'll get variety but probably not beets.

    Part of being a mature person is knowing when you're making yourself miserable and stopping that. What if you tweaked your resolution to eat one new veggie each month that's one you DIDN'T eat last year.

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  14. There is far too much suffering in the world without you trying to force-feed yourself beets. I'm no veggie expert (ask me anything about pork, though) but isn't there a different vegetable out there - a tasty one - that will give you a whole bunch of the good stuff that beets give you? There must be something better than this.

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  15. pickled beets are yummy - we had some on saturday with stovies and oatcakes. Stovies are sort of like stew, but more potatoey and mushy.

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  16. Your Friday night sounded kind of perfect to me, so either I'm old and boring too, or you are more fun than you thought! Sorry to hear things are prickly at home though.

    That's brave of you with eating beets once a month. I don't have a borscht recipe as I seem to prefer beets in a salad, with goat cheese. I kind of like them that way, but no other way.

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