BEETS!!

There's a reason Dwight Shrute grows beets--people aren't supposed to like them. They're "peasant" food, something your ancestors kept in the root cellar to sustain them through the harsh winter. They're ugly in their raw form, dirty and hairy and looking very much like the roots they are:

I know a woman who detests beets but has several cases of canned beets in her food storage so that "when the marauders come, I'll have something to give them." That's a direct quote. (I don't know why marauders wouldn't knock her over and take her entire store, but maybe they'll be happy with whatever she decides to give them. If they ever come. Apparently there are polite marauders in her version of the apocalypse.)

Anyway, I like beets. I only knew the pickled variety until I went to France, where you can buy cooked whole beets in the produce section or go to the deli for tasty marinated beet salad. Then when I started growing them in my garden, I truly became addicted.

Susan asked for my recipe for gingery beet salad, and I started making some today, documenting the quantities for everything. I don't know what I was thinking, though, and I put in a healthy dose of dijon mustard instead of ginger. It was dang tasty. Here are the proportions for that one, though everything is to taste, really:

4 c shredded beets
4 Tbsp olive oil
3 Tbsp red wine vinegar
1.5 Tbsp dijon mustard
salt and pepper

The gingery salad is about the same, but instead of mustard you put in lots and lots of fresh grated ginger. (My favorite ginger tip: keep wrapped in plastic in your freezer, then grate it still frozen with a microplane grater/zester. It grates like a dream, and you don't even have to peel it. And it keeps forever.)

My other beet stand-by is roasted beets. They taste much better than boiled, and they couldn't be easier. Just trim and scrub them, wrap them in a foil packet like a tinfoil dinner, and pop them in the oven for 45 minutes to an hour. Make sure the beets are about the same size so they cook evenly. Here's what I roasted today:

Funny note about the long, skinny beets--I have been a bad beet steward, so this is the first time I've thinned the herd, so to speak. So I thought that I'd created a mutant variety with all the overcrowding. But then I remembered that I planted two varieties, one round and one skinny. Oh yeah.

After roasting the skin comes off super easy. Then I slice them and put them in a salad with goat cheese, arugula, and the mustardy vinaigrette. Again, super tasty.

What are your favorite beet recipes?