As more people embrace eating a wholesome, natural diet filled with produce from their own garden, the farmer’s market, or a CSA, they may try vegetables they’ve never eaten before. Perhaps growing up, you never encountered a beet on your dinner plate and thought they only came in cans on the supermarket shelf. One day, your CSA share contains a bundle of 6 small beets and the volunteers encourage you to give them a try.
So, you take them home, cut off the leaves – remembering the volunteers also told you to braise those with some garlic and lemon juice - and start cleaning the roots. You have a momentary panic when you trim the stems down too far and this vegetable starts bleeding all over you. Your crisp, clean apron will forever remember this day. You decide not to trim the long root, suspecting that it, too, would cause profuse bleeding.
Your oven is already heated to 400 degrees. You put your beets in a roasting pan and slide them in, hoping for the best. An hour to an hour and a half later, you pull out nice tender beets. They look awful, though, with dry skin. After letting them cool enough to handle, you find the skin slips right off, even up by the stems. You carefully peel all the skin off the entire root, but then discover the strong white root down the middle of it is tough and inedible.
Your family balks when you bring the plate of sliced bloody red beets to the table with a side of horseradish sauce. You pointedly look at the messy children and insist they wear bibs to prevent stains. You gently recommend your sweetie pie change out of his nice white work shirt. Everyone is shocked and surprised to discover these beets are pretty darn good.
The next morning, however, you are awakened out of your early morning dreams by a scream down the hall. Your children drag you to the toilet to show you one of them must be bleeding. Laughing, you recall the volunteers at the CSA warned you about this. The pigment in beets goes through your entire digestive tract and still comes out red in the end. The kids think it’s cool and ask for more beets. From the other bathroom, you hear your spouse gasp and go off to reassure him that he doesn’t need to schedule a colonoscopy this afternoon.
Next adventure: Spicy roasted chile peppers. Hot going in, hot coming out!
22 comments:
Haha! That was really funny!
Ha! I had the same reaction after the first time I drank fresh beet juice. I thought I was hemmoraging! LOL!
This is too funny! My son also always double-checks with me that the color is indeed from the beets and he's not bleeding :) I've never baked beets, I always boil them. Usually with the skin on and then I peel it when they are cool. I grate them, add a little salt and a little olive oil and call it a salad :)
How cute!
That is a very funny story. :)
We had the same thing happen when the kids ate homemade sweet root, "Licorice" ice cream... LOL I laughed for hours at them.... Thanks for sharing that was great!
LOL LOL ROFLMFAO!
If they have a white/tough root down the middle you should talk to your CSA farmers - they should grow a better variety.
Scary stuff, isn't it.
Beets are great raw as well, especially the Chioggia variety.
Anonymous - the white root is very thin, like string or quilter's thread really. You can actually nibble around it... There are some limitations as to what varieties will grow here, namely the heat and lack of water. I've gotten vegetables (and fruit) from other local farmers at the Farmer's Market and have to say that my CSA farmer has them all beat. Better quality, better taste. (No bitterness, as I've tasted in some of the others' beets.)
:0) yeah i had my first beet last summer. they are pretty ok.
I rarely post, but this one got me. I haven't eaten beets since my "beet" diet in my early 20's had me eating 2 cans of beets a day. I lasted for 3 days...ugh!
I think I may buy some at the farmer's market this summer.
Dude, what's with all this poo talk? Heh.
That was the more fiber you were talking about, right??
Roasted is our favorite way of preparing beets. Canned don't hold a candle to them!
Melinda - everybody poops....some of us more easily than others due to the nice healthy fiber. :)
Hee hee! Great one, Chile.
Ha ha ha! Sometimes the beet color doesn't show up for a few days. It seems the more of them we eat, the later the pigment shows up. So it was that one summer, about a week after eating and juicing beets for three days, the pigment began to come out in the toilet... I had totally forgotten about the beets, and thought I was dying. I spent a whole day looking up rectal bleeding and colon cancer before telling my husband, in tears. And then he reminded me and we both had a good laugh!
Hahha! If only you'd posted this two days ago! I sent TheBoy to the doctor because he seemed to be peeing blood!
Your CSA was kind to warn you -- if only our farmers' market had done the same!
We had our beets cold -- cut into slices like big stain-y carrots. Yum! They made a great lunchtime snack.
LOL! We don't flush every time for urine and I've noticed quite a pink tinge in the water. :)
First Baby + bright red nappies = panicking mother & Health Visitor rolling around the floor, laughing!
Forwarded a booklist email to you ~ hope you don't mind: 1 title started jumping up & down screaming CHILE very loudly....
Ha! I expect to have this conversation with my children in the morning. We had borscht for lunch today and reckon I'll be getting a worried/puzzled call from the toilet tomorrow...
Too funny! That will happen to me someday, I'm sure.
Of course, when your 1 year old chows down on a pint of blueberries, it's pretty darn nasty too. Navy blue poo, anyone!?!
Yeah I remember the first time I had beets. That was interesting.
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