Beets Me

I’m sure I’ll talk about Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs a lot so might as well bring it up now 🙂

Around October we decided to join a CSA with some friends and split a share.  How this works is you pay up front to a small, locally owned, organic farm and every week you get a box full of veggies of whatever they harvested.  We split a share with some friends because a share can feed a family of four and it halves the price.  We began with Hands of the Earth Farm which has now given their farm to the Urban Roots.  A fantastic non-profit.  Urban Roots is having a CSA but it’s a little more expensive than we can afford right now since part of the money goes to pay for the veggies and another part is a kind-of donation to the program.  Maybe one day we will have enough extra income to join this CSA but for now we had to find a different one.  We ended up going with Johnson’s Backyard Garden.  (Which, by the way, has a fantastic blog if you’re interested in this kind of thing).

Because of this, we have eaten way more veggies than we ever would have otherwise.  Not to mention it has expanded our culinary world to veggies I’m pretty sure I would never have given the time of day.  Consequently, I have really developed a love of cooking.  This is hindered by the Squeaker’s constant need to be in my arms but we do the best we can.

This brings me to my point.  In this week’s box we got a batch of beets.  Before joining the CSA I had only eaten canned beets when my mom was on this weird diet.  They were plain gross.  After getting them several times in our boxes I figured I should give them another try.  I roasted them several times which turned out good.  But tonight I found a recipe that was dee-licious.  Roasted Beet Salad with Oranges and Beet Greens.  So if you hate beets, give this one a try.  It’s very refreshing and not overly beety.  I also love that you can use the whole veggie and not just throw out the leafy part.

If it makes it more palatable you can picture Dwight and Mose picking the beets.  Hmm, maybe that’s less palatable.