Today's Harvest

Eight sweet onions

Two medium pickling cucumbers, planted at lovely lady's request
(Imagine her disappointment when she found that the plant grows cucumbers, not pickles.)

Three zucchini

A bowlful of raspberries

A bunch of fragrant lavender

And two buckets of blueberries from the blueberry field down the road.

And I picked sour cherries yesterday, so there are cherries in the dryer, and cherries in the fridge waiting to be made into pie and jam.

Life is good.

On the table

Dinner Menu

Fritattas, made with eggs from our own hens and my sister's:
--Baby beets, fresh onions and spinach, all from the garden
--Fresh onion from the garden, diced bacon, broccoli and tomato from the Farmer's Market

Beet greens from the garden and Swiss chard from the Farmer's Market, sauteed and steamed with fresh onion from the garden

Homemade honey whole wheat bread, made with honey purchased from a friend, served with butter and homemade strawberry jam

Strawberry-rhubarb pie, made with strawberries from the front yard and rhubarb from the neighbor
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We're making the move. We avoid processed foods. Eat more fresh fruits and vegetables. We serve oatmeal instead of breakfast cereal. We're growing, picking and preserving our own food. Eating seasonally. More local foods, grown by and purchased from people in and near our community, and we're participating in Community-Supported Agriculture. We drink locally-roasted coffee instead of Peet's. Our diet is continually evolving. Ten years ago, we ate a lot of pasta and potatoes, out-of-season vegetables, store jam with all of its preservatives. We didn't read labels looking for foods without high fructose corn syrup. We didn't eat a lot of salad, not a lot of green food at all, actually.

There's got to be a balance, and we haven't dived in headfirst. We can't grow our own rice and wheat in the back yard, nor do we have any desire to do so. We love bananas and eat broccoli and salad year-round, and though we purchase less than we used to, these foods are still staples in our home. That may change as our diet continues to evolve, as the children get older and more tolerant of green food and things that taste different, and as we educate ourselves on the pleasures of eating seasonally.

When I look at last night's menu, though, turning into a "locavore" isn't really what I'm thinking of. I'm delighted by good food. I'm grateful that we have the means to serve simple delicious meals to our children. And I feel a sense of connection to my meal, satisfaction that I know where a lot of that food came from: I can look out the window at my garden and at my hens scratching in the dirt. (Around my peas!! Ack! SHOO!) My children planted seeds in the dirt and saw them end up on our table as greens. Ten minutes before I sauteed a fresh onion, it was in the ground. Some of our vegetables were bought from the people who had just harvested them from their own gardens that morning. On Wednesdays, my house smells like fresh bread. We met a new neighbor who gave us rhubarb for free simply because he had enough to give away. My children play with the children of the family who sold us our honey, and I know that the chickens that lay the extra eggs we buy live in a large and clean pen. Our scraps and discarded stalks and rinds will turn into rich soil in which to grow more food for our table.

Life is good. Food is good.

In the garden

Strawberries

Peas

Beans

Beets

Chives

Sunflowers

Harvest

Today, we harvested three small onions to make more space in the onion bed, thinned eight tiny baby beets, picked four heads of lettuce and a head of bok choi. Yesterday's strawberries and free rhubarb from the neighbor down the street are on the counter in a beautiful pie. It's time to harvest the rest of the spinach to make room for tomatoes and peppers and eggplant. The roses and peonies are blooming.

If you need me, I'll be in the garden.

This deserves its own tiny little blog post....

This morning, I picked my first red, ripe strawberry of the season.

And I didn't share.

A Day in the Life: Here Comes the Sun

It's been gray and chilly and drizzly. I have been utterly exhausted for days, so tired that I wanted nothing more than to just crawl into bed, pull the covers over my head and sleep for a week.

Today there was sun.

I dug up the grass that had invaded the strawberry bed and planted new strawberries. I weeded the garden. I thinned the spinach, the beets and the salad greens, so we're having fresh green salad tonight for dinner, the first harvest of the season. I planted basil and baby bok choi and carrots.

I had help in the garden. Kindergarten gent and his second-grade cousin each earned thirteen cents squashing snails, and they sat on the edge of the garden box snacking on baby bok choi they thinned from the salad mix. Kindergarten gent will not eat any green food that we put on his plate. Green food is defiled and heinous and foul. But I casually mentioned that his older brother loved the bok choi so much he ate it straight out of the garden, and next thing I knew my greens-hating gent was pulling off a leaf and chewing. "Yum!" he said, and helped himself to another. I tried not to faint or show my amazement in any other way, lest I call his attention to the fact that the food, in any other circumstances, might be considered green.

I baked bread, the honey whole-wheat bread I used to make when I was a kid.

I took care of the chicks and the chickens, cleaning and watering and feeding. Collected two round eggs, one still warm.

I read a book (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver) and I napped in the sun. Well, that's not entirely true. I read about two sentences of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Then I used the book as a sort of tiny pillow. The napping part is true.

I am sunburned and dirty and scratched and tired. My hair is frizzy and wild. My fingernails are dirty, and I went barefoot in the garden so my heels are a disgrace.

But I feel whole. I didn't realize until this day how much I craved sunshine.

I just took two beautiful round brown loaves of bread out of the oven. The house smells of fresh bread and soup, and my favorite ceramic bowl is full of fresh tossed greens-spinach, beet greens, lettuce. My children are out-of-doors riding bikes and looking for bugs in the grass. A day of sunshine and good work and outdoor play has restored me. I feel like my self again, refreshed. I'm off to swing in the hammock until dinner time, with my book.

Life is good.

Nearly Wordless Wednesday: In the garden

Prepared beds

Snap peas

Spinach

Rhubarb

Shelling Peas

Onions

Raspberries

Cauliflower, strawberries, more onions, lettuce and bok choi, potatoes. Sweet peas and nasturtiums.

Life is good.

Victory Gardens

Victory Gardens: http://www.revivevictorygarden.org/

Eugene/Springfield--Victory Gardens for All, food does grow on trees: http://www.victorygardensforall.org/

School in the garden

Yesterday I was feeling achy and tired and yucky. There's something going around. I really wasn't up for our Friday nature outing.

I thought, "We need a day off." I said, "Maybe we should just read all day." I grumped, "I don't want to doooo anythiiiing."

Instead, I took the fine young gents outside. We've got nature in our back yard too. We shoveled the last of our dirt pile into the wheelbarrow and hauled it into the back yard. Good heavy work for growing bodies. The boys told me that the dirt was good for the garden because it has lots of nutrients. We leveled our front yard planting area and planted second grade gent's dahlias and his brother's lilies. They read the packages to follow the planting directions. We discussed what we'd like to plant in that spot this spring, and they seriously considered what our family eats and enjoys most from the garden. More strawberries, they think. Then they voluntarily pulled weeds and explained to me that we needed to leave the weeds root-side-up so that they couldn't get nutrients or water from the soil. We dug up a garden box and they told me that we needed the light new planting mix mixed into our boxes because it will make the soil less dense so roots can grow. They have absorbed so much from our casual conversations about the garden.

Then I was pooped. I really am a little under the weather. The work was just what I needed and it did me good, but now my body was saying "Time to rest." So I hung in the back yard hammock. I was soon joined by two busy giggly wiggly little bodies. We swung and giggled and then we calmed to listen to the birds. Later the boys drew their dahlia and lily bulbs in their nature notebooks, and pictures of what they think the flowers will look like once they bloom.

My boys work really hard when given the opportunity. Every time this week that I was out there hauling dirt, they were right there with me. Meaningful work is important, not just for adults, but for children too. They need to see that they are making a difference and that their time is valuable. Ditching the books for the morning and spending our time out of doors was a good decision. I forget sometimes, in our drive for academic rigor, that we need a balance. Time to read and learn from books, time to explore and experiment, and also time to work, time to play, time to cuddle, time to rest. We got a little of each yesterday, and we were refreshed at the end of the day.
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A note for Dawn....
This has nothing to do with my post, except that I took it while we were outside yesterday. Dawn, until you get some warm weather, I'll share our spring with you:

I can't wait to see your crocuses when they bloom.
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And a garden note....
Look at this urban farm: Urban Homestead, Little Homestead in the City: Journal of a Self-Sufficient Urban Life

They call themselves eco-pioneers. They've got ducks, goats, chickens, and a beautiful garden on a fifth of an acre in Pasadena, California. Check it out!

Raspberries

It's been perfect weather for the backyard gardener. Rain in the evening, clearing throughout the day, sunny and cool, or even almost warm, in the afternoon when it's finally time to get out into the garden. I've been gradually preparing the garden for spring planting. This week, I tidied the raspberries: Pruned, thinned, weeded, mulched. The photo was taken about halfway through the process. Here's a clear, concise, step-by-step article on how to prune rapsberries: Time to Tame the Raspberry Jungle.

Three days ago, I was digging up and whacking away at bare sticks. Today many of the larger canes had tight reddish buds with green leaf tips peeking through. Spring has sprung.

Pumpkin: From seed to pie

Over the river and through the woods. It's that time of year, so I'm bumping up this pumpkin post from last year.

As long as we're talking pumpkin pie, if you're planning on coming to my house for Thanksgiving this year (2008), just show up sometime around noon and bring what you brought last year. That will save us all a bunch of phone calls. It's not like I want to talk to you people ahead of time. If you didn't come last year and you want to, call me. The more the merrier. Or just show up, unless you're some creepy internet stalker stranger. If you're a creepy internet stalker and you do show up, you'll have to do the dishes and serve the pie.

Pumpkin: From Seed to Pie


"Fresh pumpkin is so difficult to use that few modern cooks go down this road." (The New Best Recipe, by the editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine, p. 903)

I'm crunching the last of our crispy salty pumpkins seeds as I type. Tuesday we scooped the seeds out of our little pie pumpkins, Wednesday we roasted seeds and baked and pureed pumpkin, and by yesterday's Thanksgiving feast, the tiny pie pumpkins were creamy pumpkin pies.

Wednesday evening I was making pumpkin pies, stirring the pumpkin in a pan on the stove, and I wondered idly aloud, "Why do I have to stir the filling until it's glossy? What purpose does this step serve?" One of my favorite things about The New Best Recipe is the blurb before the actual recipe explaining why the recipe works, and Mom was there to read to me while I stirred. Well, first she read the above sentence to me, the one about modern cooks not using that difficult fresh pumpkin. Then she found the part about the stovetop stirring. Here's why you're supposed to cook the pumpkin and spices ahead of time (from the same page of the cookbook): "You can freshen the taste of canned pumpkin by cooking it with the sugar and spices before combining it with the custard ingredients. As the pumpkin simmers, you can actually smell the unwelcome canned odor give way to the sweet scent of fresh squash."

Umm...yum?

I still wouldn't skip this step when using fresh pumpkin. Combining the pumpkin, brown sugar and pie spices then cooking them for a few minutes on the stove while your pie crust is prebaking deepens the flavor of the fresh pumpkin, giving you rich dark orangey deliciousness. Then stir in the cream and the eggs and pour into a hot partially-baked pie crust for a creamy-custardy filling in a crust that stays crispy instead of getting mushy.

And the second thing I'd say is...really? Honestly, I was a little taken aback by the idea of fresh pumpkin being difficult. Preparing fresh pumpkin is almost as easy as baking and mashing a potato, and it's delicious.

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From Seed to Pie: Fresh Pumpkin

Growing the Pumpkin: For best results, you really can't just cook any old pumpkin. Even pumpkins labeled "pie pumpkins" at the grocery store aren't necessarily sweet sugar pumpkins, though they are still much tastier than the larger jack-o-lantern pumpkins you'll find at the pumpkin patch that are perfect for carving. You can also substitute a sweet winter squash, like acorn squash, for a perfectly lovely "pumpkin" pie. If you're growing your own pumpkins, look for pumpkin seeds labeled "sugar pumpkin." They will typically be much smaller than jack-o-lantern pumpkins, but because they're intended for eating, they're selected for flavor and sweetness rather than size and decorativeness.

I'm not even close to being a Master Gardener, but I'll tell you how I grow pumpkins. I'd suggest doing a little more thorough reading elsewhere if you've never grown anything before in your life. I buy my seeds, plant them in one end of one of my garden boxes, and check them every few days to see if they've sprouted. If they haven't sprouted or something has munched them, I plant a few more seeds. I pull weeds once in a while. When I get around to it in the fall, around the time it starts getting cold but before it frosts, I pick the pumpkins and put them in the cool but dry garage until I'm ready to use them. Pumpkins are perfect for the lackadaisical gardener because that's pretty much it, and I always have enough pumpkin for Thanksgiving pies and more. (Yearning for better directions? More than you ever wanted to know about growing pumpkins at Pumpkin Nook.)

(Cooking directions cut and pasted and slightly modified from an August '06 Poohsticks post, What's That Squash?)

How to get from pie pumpkin to pumpkin puree: Heat your oven to 400 degrees. Halve your pumpkin(s) and take out the seeds and slimy bits. Set the seeds aside for roasting later. Brush the cut edges of the pumpkin with a bit of oil and place on a rimmed baking sheet with the cut side down. Bake for about 40 minutes (for small pumpkins) to 1 hour (for larger). When done the flesh of the pumpkin should be soft when pierced with a fork, and the outer shell should be pulling away from the flesh. Let cool until you can handle it without burning yourself, then peel the shell off of the pumpkin. Puree the pumpkin flesh in the food processor.

Using your puree: You can serve the puree as is with a little butter and brown sugar, as though it's mashed/pureed squash (because it is). If you would like to use your puree in your favorite recipes for pie, scones (my favorite!) or pumpkin bread, let it cool then put it in the fridge for a few hours, or even overnight, if you can. Some of the liquid will separate from the puree, allowing you to skim it away so that your puree is just a bit thicker.

I disagree with The New Best Recipe contention that fresh pumpkin is difficult to work with; however, the moisture content is difficult to predict. Particularly when making baked goods, you may need to adjust recipe ingredients slightly to compensate for the fact that fresh pumpkin is a little more liquid than the thicker canned pumpkin, but that's a fairly simple adjustment. I usually cut back on the liquid and/or add a little more flour, depending on the recipe. You can call it by...well, by eye rather than by ear, I guess, if you're familiar with the basic consistency of muffin or pancake batter or whatever you're making. Taking the time to experiment and get comfortable cooking with fresh pumpkin is worth the payoff, because it is delicious!

Paperwhites

Supply shopping at the garden store: Math, reading, planning, budgeting, manners, making purchases.


Painting: Art
Planning a gift: Manners and showing appreciation for others


Planting: Logic and planning, gardening, nature, biology.


The chickens didn't learn anything. They just want food.


Nature journals and bulb study: Spelling and grammar, handwriting, drawing, botany, nature study.



Shhhh....they don't know they're learning.

Forcing Paperwhite Narcissus Bulbs

Farmer in Chief

An open letter to the next president, from The New York Times

"Dear Mr. President-Elect..."

"Which brings me to the deeper reason you will need not simply to address food prices but to make the reform of the entire food system one of the highest priorities of your administration: unless you do, you will not be able to make significant progress on the health care crisis, energy independence or climate change."

Read the entire article, "Farmer in Chief," written by Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, here.

Fruits of our labors

The mornings are cool, the frost is coming. Final fall harvest: A handful of green beans, several handfuls of dried bean pods for seed, four red tomatoes, three lemon cucumbers, four pumpkins, one small greenish pepper, a mystery squash and one surprise, a green cucumber in the corner of the garden. A handful of raspberries. Tender young beet greens, thinnings for a salad. Three warm brown eggs. I'll be gathering eggs all winter, I hope.

The green beans will go in tonight's chicken pie, with a spinach and beet green salad and sliced tomatoes and cucumbers on the side, and roasted beets and leeks from the youth farm. Eggs are in the fridge, minus the one I stuck in my pocket for lack of hands. The dried beans have been shelled, labeled and put away until spring. The pumpkins and squash are waiting to be roasted and turned into pie. We'll be putting in an order for onions, potatoes and garlic from the youth farm.

We've still got beets and carrots growing, and a few late raspberries ripening. I've already been pulling corn and sunflower stalks, weeding, yanking the bean vines off the trellis. Today I'll go out in the cool fall sunshine and finish the job, putting the garden to bed for the winter.

Life is good.

Kids in the Garden

They will plant crooked rows, dump a handful of tiny seeds in one spot, and dig up the bed you've just planted.

They'll pull up the spinach and leave the weeds, trample the strawberries, knock over the bean trellis, pull the carrots before they're ready, and eat all of the raspberries before you get even one.

They will talk your ear off. They will ask "Why? Why? Why?"

They will say, "Look! Look! A ripe tomato! Look, here's a cucumber! Wow! A butterfly! Look at the sunflowers! Look, what I found!" And they will insist that you actually stop and look and marvel right along with them.

They will grow up to be gardeners.

Wordless Wednesday

Fruits of our labors

In Which we have tomatoes

I know, I know. It's Wordless Wednesday. As in no words. But notice the produce picture above. I cannot let this pass unremarked:

Tomatoes!

Those tomatoes deserve a few words. After a cold wet spring in which we despaired for our sun-loving summer produce, and worried that we wouldn't see the sun until September, we've had delicious sunshine, warm weather, and just enough drizzle to remind us that we still live in Oregon.

This afternoon I was poking around the garden, pulling carrots and the last of the green onions--who knew my fine young gent and I would love fresh green onions for an afternoon treat??--the pretty red nasturtiums vining through the tomatoes caught my eye. I'd never seen nasturtiums such a vivid red. So I looked more closely. After two months of watching, despairing that the tomatoes would never blossom, worried that the blossoms would never fruit, anxious that the fruits would never ripen....Glorious bright red (and yellow) homegrown tomatoes.

Homegrown tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes
What'd life be without homegrown tomatoes
Only two things that money can't buy,
That's true love & homegrown tomatoes.
(from "Homegrown Tomatoes" by Guy Clark)

If you need me, I'll be in the garden with a shaker of salt.

From the CSA newsletter...

From the Food for Lane County Youth Farm page:
"Established in 1998, the Youth Farm is an innovative program combining hunger relief with youth services and education. The three-acre farm provides paying work, job training and education to at-risk teenagers throughout the spring and summer, and serves as an educational work site for local alternative schools and programs serving at-risk youth throughout the year."

"The core of the program is the summer Youth Farm Crew. Every year the Gardens hire 12-18 crew members, ages 14-17 years, from low-income backgrounds who have significant barriers to employment. Our youth crew plant, care for and harvest diverse vegetable crops, learning and growing while they work."

And from the weekly newsletter:
"At the Youth Farm teens love to eat the produce they grow. The most popular day at the farm is Wednesday, aka Harvest or CSA day. We spend all morning harvesting everything that is ripe and ready for your boxes, and by mid-morning break, the youth farmers are already planning what produce they want to bring home to share with their families. Last week zucchini was the all-around favorite, several of the youth farmers were going to take home the larger zukes that got away from us to make zucchini bread, usually with a mom or grandma. Bryn planned her evening salad of lettuce and cukes and radishes; Ryan was going to cook dinner for his foster family with produce from the farm. Justin admitted to me that he brought home kohlrabi the week before and he and his mom couldn't figure out what to do with it. At lunch, I shared some of my kohlrabi slaw with him and a recipe, and he couldn't wait to try it at home.

So much pride in the food they help to grow. May it nourish you and your families well."

Well. I'd add my own words, but I think that says it all. It's a privilege to participate in this program, nourishing to the body and to the spirit for all of us.

Peace to you.

Tuesday Ten: Just a Bowl of Cherries

We have become friends with a new family, people we met at the park through a mutual friend. New Friend has a cherry tree, and invited us over to pick sour cherries. (Here's a really cool thing: My favorite cookbook says that sour cherries simply aren't available, except in Michigan, the Pacific Northwest, and pockets of New England. I am so lucky.) Lovely Lady the Elder gamely climbed a ladder and risked getting poked in the eye by a stick or falling off a ladder to help pick cherries. Not only that, but she accompanied us on what was really a playday for the gents without complaining once. She's a good egg.

I love cherries. Cherry trees are beautiful, and fresh-off-the-tree cherries are fabulous. I promised my kids a cherry pie, and we picked a rather large bucket of cherries. I glowed when I brought them home, revelling in my bounty.

Until I had to pit them. All of them. Is there a job more tedious than pitting cherries? I took them out into the back yard and pitted for what seemed like hours.

Tuesday Ten: Yesterday's Ten Random Thoughts While Pitting Cherries

1. "Life is just a bowl of cherries...."
You know me by now. Might as well get the song out of the way right from the start. Not a bad message, though. Leave it to me to turn an earworm into a life-affirming message, right? But seriously....

Life is just a bowl of cherries.
Don't take it serious; life's so mysterious.

and

The sweet things in life, to you were just loaned
So how can you lose what you've never owned?

and

Life is just a bowl of cherries,
So live and laugh at it all.

I don't need to add another word.

2. "Thank you, bunny, I'd love help." (Thinking: "GAH!!")
The fine young gents are fascinated by the cherry pitter. We have one cherry pitter. The Mom dilemma: Do I chirp "Sure you can help, sweetheart!" and grit my teeth as the helper sloooooooowly pits the cherries and drops them in the grass and feeds them to the dog? Or do I say no and crush any hopes of raising helpful young gents?

3. Someone needs to weed the garden.
I've had that thought several times the past couple weeks. It works really well. Try it and see how fast the garden gets weeded. Heh.

Once the weather finally warmed up, the garden took off, and so did the weeds. Problem was, we took off too--to the park, to the pool, to visit friends. We just haven't been home, and while I'd kept up with the worst of the garden bed weeding, by this week there was a veritable carpet of dandelions and grass and mallow and those ones with the funny flat leaves between the boxes. So I'm sitting in the yard endlessly pitting cherries, looking at the weedy garden, thinking "Someone needs to weed the garden." The problem is that once it gets that bad, it seems like an overwhelming job, so I avoid tackling it. That works really well too.

Today I weeded the garden, by the way. It was cool and sprinkling for much of the day, perfect for garden work. I thought about taking a picture of the weed pile and posting that too, but I didn't want to run in for the camera. Not really. That's a lie. I run in for the camera to take pictures of my feet, and the weed pile is sure a lot more interesting than my long toe. But there's such a thing as keeping it too real. I don't want to destroy my, er,...your fantasies of me as a gardener extraordinaire.

As a matter of fact, let's just pretend I haven't said a word about those weeds. My garden is immaculate. No, really. My house too, while we're at it.

4. Whose idea was it to pick so many %$&*^$%& cherries?

5. Cherry pie? Cherry cobbler? Cherry pie? Cherry cobbler?
Loving husband makes the pie crust in this family. Loving husband was in California, and refused to come home to make pie crust. Even though I said I was making fresh cherry pie, and cherries are only in season this time of year. So I was stuck pondering the dilemma: Make a pie, or take the easy way out? Ooooo. Or what about cherry crumble? Crumble topping is even easier than biscuits for cobbler. What to do?

6. Praise.
Sitting in the back yard on a warm summer afternoon while the kids play in the sprinkler, after a lovely morning of swim lessons and visiting with friends.....life is good. My heart was full. We live a blessed life in this wonderful world. I was content.

7. Well, sort of, because my next thought was.....

8. Whose idea was it to pick so many %$&*^$%& cherries?

9. I wonder if I should try drying these?
I did and they were fabulous.

10. This had better be worth it.
It was. We have canned pie filling for fine young pie-loving gent's November birthday pie, ate a spinach and pine nut salad with dried cherries for dinner this evening, and stored a small jar of dried cherries in the pantry.

As you can see, I made a pie. It was lovely, a beautiful pie. I made a beautiful pie. (Don't tell loving husband, or he'll expect me to make my own pie crust all the time.) I carved little cherry-shaped steam vents in the top, and they actually looked like cherries--with the little leaf at the top of the stem, even--after the pie was baked. We ate cherry pie with lunch today, and it was perfect.

Mmmmmmmm...............cherry pie. Warm cherry pie. Warm cherry pie with just a tiny scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.

Gotta go.

Eat Beets

An article about cooking beets, including delicious-sounding recipes:
http://www.thegreenguide.com/doc/106/beets

Some excerpts:

"...beets along with prickly pears make up the only edible sources of the valuable family of pigments called betalains. Current research is discovering the ability of these pigments to act as powerful antioxidants, helping in the fight against the damage caused by free radicals. Beets also provide potassium, vitamins A and C, magnesium, riboflavin, iron, copper, calcium and zinc."

"If you purchase beets with the greens attached, it is best to cut them off as you as you get them home, and serve the greens within a few days. They are similar in flavor to Swiss chard and can be sautéed with garlic and olive oil. The beets themselves can be stored in the refrigerator loosely wrapped for a few weeks."

and

"Beets can be eaten raw, steamed, boiled, juiced or roasted, but no matter how you eat them, they are a delicious and healthy addition to your diet."
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Added later: Who knew??? I rubbed the beets with a little olive oil, wrapped them in foil, and roasted them according to the directions in the article linked above. I tasted the beets plain so I could get a sense of the flavor.

Yum. Just....yum.

Delicious and easy. I peeled and sliced them, tossed them with a little salt and pepper, and Voila! Beets for dinner.

Now to convince the kids that they really hate beets so that I can have them all to myself.