Hi,
As you know, I have always hated beets. I have hated the taste that was like dirt. I also hated how, as with turmeric, if you’re not careful you’ll be stained for more than a few minutes! Beet juice is a great dye.
I know that beets are healthy. My Mom used to tell me to eat my beets because they were good for me, because they had iron or something like that. So for me, eating beets was always a kind of unpleasant obligation.
When we were together, you maybe felt that you had to sneak beets into the house because I found even their odor unpleasant and was probably not quiet about it. I must apologize for that, if I was such a beet-hater that I caused trouble for beet-lovers, which I know you are. I suspect you still love beets.
Recently, maybe after the childhood trauma of eating beets had extinguished, as classical conditioning eventually does, I learned more about how beets are nutrient-dense vegetables, and so on. They can lower blood pressure, enhance athletic endurance, and support digestive and brain health. I mean, who older than 50 could push back on that? Sounds like a good benefit, as they say.
So I looked through my countless cookbooks for beet recipes. My Mom prepared them as sliced beets, and they were straight uncoated medicine for me. I realize that for some people pure beets are nearly divine, particularly if they have the right balance between crisp and overcooked. In any case, I was looking for a recipe I could tolerate, for health’s sake.
Then I found one that started out, I hated beets when I was a child… The author went on to describe an insanely simple recipe. You peel and slice the beets, coat them with olive oil and salt and pepper, and roast them in a foil pouch that is as tight as you can make it. For about an hour at 400 degrees.
It seemed so simple, other than the part about getting your hands all red. So, I thought, Maybe this one’s for me? I tried it.
They just came out of the oven! I’ll see if I can handle them, for health’s sake, when they cool down a bit.
I hope you understand that I couldn’t think of beets without also thinking of you! With a certain degree of apology for my anti-beet grumblings, but also with great appreciation of when we were raising the kids… and not turning them off needlessly to beets!
Well, they still taste awfully beety….. I just tasted them.
They’re a little less intense than I recall. But, anyway, I found a solution, for health’s sake. It’s my usual solution for making cooked things taste better, garlic salt!
Sprinkled a little on the beets as they cooled, and I think they will become a nice thing to have in the fridge so I can take my medicine every day, and feel at home with the garlic salt. Might even try adding toasted sesame seeds and tahini. For health’s sake!