A Date With Beets Tonight

Busy with beets this evening!

Beet Harvest

I love beets.  This year I planted three varieties, the traditional Detroit red, a golden beet and that swirly heirloom chioggia.  The goldens did not do that well and the Detroit reds were medium, the chioggias seemed to grow to be the biggest.  Granted, I did a very poor job of thinning this year, but I kept telling myself I wanted a lot of beets!  It was a perfect drizzly day for finally pulling these and seeing how they did this season.  A little critter did sneak into the garden and munch on a few of the tops of the biggest beets in one part of the garden {this critter had to have gone beet to beet looking for the biggest ones...interesting to thing about}.  But overall I'm pretty happy with the beets this year.  Now the scrubbing, pickling, and freezing will begin.

Pickling will be how 3/4 of these are used, but roasting is of course delicious.

Beets with Greek Garlic Sauce
Roasted Beets and Carrots with Pork Chops

Taste Testing

Today, right before it started to rain, I stopped by the garden.  In the process of checking on everything's progress I spotted a few items worth taste testing.  The beets are coming along, but still have some growing to do, and so do the spuds.  However, one beet looked too good to pass up and the red la soda that was partially uncovered due to all the rain lately also looked worthy of taking along to add to a roasted vegetable dinner.  Add in a hand full of kale and one couldn't ask for more.