What do you like to make with Beets?

The other day, a friend told me that she had received a couple of beets from the All Peoples garden. She had eaten store-bought, canned beets before, but had never eaten a fresh beet in her whole life. She wanted to know how to cook it. So, let's talk about beets!

Photo credit:  Culinary Hill

Beet Basics

Beets have three basic parts:  the leaves, the stems and the bulb or root. Beets come in different colors, usually described as golden beets or red beets. When we think about eating beets, we usually think about the big round root bulb, but we can actually eat all of these parts of the beet plant.

Beet leaves are great for using in salad, if they are small and tender. Use a scissors or a knife to cut them from the beet stems, and be sure to wash the leaves well. Bigger leaves can be cooked in the same way that you might cook Swiss chard or collard greens.

The stems are also edible, and can be used in the same way that you might use celery. The bigger ones can be tough and stringy, so those might be better off in the compost pile than on your dinner plate.

The beet root itself might be big, might or might be small. The bigger the beet, the tougher it might be. If you want to eat the beet raw, you need to wash it really well, peel it with a potato peeler and then grate it.  There are many recipes online for grated beet salad. Most recipes call for cooked beets. If you have big beets, it is best to cook them.

If you are going to cook your beets, or use them in a recipe such as pickled beets, the easiest way to remove the peel is to boil the beets. Use a scissors or knife to cut the stems, leaving just a little bit of each stem still on the beet. Wash the beets really well, and put them in a pot. Cover them with water and set them on the stove to boil until they are tender enough to stick a fork in them. Do not boil them until they are mushy. You can save that beet water to use for soup stock or as the liquid to make pink tortillas or bread or muffins. Let the beets cool a bit. Stick a fork into the end with the stem bits and gently use a paring knife to slip the skins off toward the fork. Lastly, set the beet down and cut off the stem end, like you would an onion.

The cooked, peeled beets are then ready to eat. You can eat them warm or make a beet salad or use them in a recipe. When I was growing up, we picked beets and ate them several times each week, usually warm with a little butter on them (which I personally DO NOT like). My grandmothers always canned jars and jars of pickled beets every summer (which I personally LOVE). If I have beets, I usually make beet salad with goat cheese or I make pickled beets.

This year, I was looking through my grandma's cookbooks and found a recipe for Beet Relish, submitted to a community cookbook in 1923. I decided to give it a try, and I am very glad I did!

Beet Relish Recipe

This is the original recipe as it appears in the cookbook.

I put my cooked, peeled beets into my food processor.  I scooped one cup
of ground beets into a measuring cup, and estimated I had 1 1/2 cups total.
This is where fraction math comes in handy!  1 1/2 cups, or 3/2 cups is 3/4 of
the original recipe.  Multiply each ingredient by 3/4 to make the adjustment.
If you need help with that, be sure to contact Miss Linda for  math lesson
at Peeps Academy!

This is what the beet relish looked like once I added all of the other
ingredients.  

I like to store relish and pesto in small canning jars. Because there
is butter in this recipe, the relish cannot be canned in sealed jars for storing
in the pantry. Instead, it is best stored in the freezer.

It is important to label your homemade items so you are sure to use the
oldest things first. 

Are you curious about this?  Do you see my frozen saved beet water?
This is the collection of stuff I saved from one week of harvesting, freezing,
canning and cooking. The celery water and beet water melt down with the
vegetable scraps to make a nice vegetable stock, which I cooked, strained and froze for soup.

What kinds of things do you like to make with beets? Maybe you can try out a new recipe and post a photo in the comments.

Note:  Beets are very good for you and if you eat a bunch of the red ones, yes, your pee will turn pink.

Submitted by Linda Muth

Make Chive Pesto While the Sun Shines

This is the time of year when there are chives, chives and more chives!  

When I was a little girl, my mom would always say, "You gotta make hay while the sun shines."  Maybe some of you have heard that phrase.  Even if you haven't, you get the idea: it is best to complete a task or harvest your crop while you can, before time runs out and the moment to harvest or complete the task passes.

Well, we are not talking about hay.  We are talking about chives! 

 

Chive patch beside the All Peoples Greenhouse

As summer progresses and it gets hotter outside, the chive flowers dry up and the chive leaves sometimes get a little tough or even turn brown.  So, in June, while we have nice, fresh, juicy green chives in abundance, it is good to DO something with them.  Then we can enjoy them all year around.

We already learned how to make chive flower vinegar in a previous chive story.  Let's see what else we can do with chives!

Did you know you can freeze chives?  Cut small bunches from your plant with scissors.  Sort and wash the chives with cold water. Dry them with a clean dish towel.  

After you cut your chives from the plants, spread them
out on your counter and pick out any brown ones.  You can 
use a scissors to cut any brown tips off of otherwise
perfectly good green chives.

Wash the chives really well, then dry them with a towel.

Cut the clean, dry chives into small pieces and freeze them.  I wrap little packets of them in wax paper and store them in a container in my freezer.  Then, in the winter, when I want to make baked potato soup or a stew, I can pull out a little chive packet and dump the frozen chives right in.

Little frozen chive packets

When I harvested my chives the other day, I accidentally cut a few of the flower stems too.  That's OK.  Those stems are not good to eat, but you can set them aside while the flowers dry.  Then carefully turn the flowers upside down over a bowl to catch the chive seeds.  You can save those seeds to plant chives in a new location next year or to share with a friend!  Chive plants are perennial, and should come back year after year if you take good care of them.

These chive flowers are already too dry to eat.

One tasty treat you can make with green chives is pesto!  Pesto is basically a paste, made from ground up herbs, that you can use to spread on crackers or toast or as a sauce with pasta.  To make chive pesto you need a lot of chives.  Start with a small and simple recipe.

1/2 cup freshly grated cheese (Parmesan, Romano or a hard cheddar - just not a gooey cheese)

2 cups chopped chives (wash them, dry them, cut them into pieces about 1/2 inch long)

1 ounce chopped almonds (use a small handful of whole ones and chop them up)

1 small clove of garlic (chop it into a couple of chunks)

1/8 c olive oil

You really need a food processor or maybe a blender to do this.  In a processor, just use the regular knife blade.  (If you are a kid reading this, be sure to have a grown-up do the things which involve sharp tools like the processor and the knife.)

Shred/grate the cheese right in the processor.  Add the chives, almonds and garlic.  Process until it is all chopped up.  Slowly drizzle in the olive oil through the small opening as the processor is running.  You should get a pretty smooth pesto, but a little chunky is OK too.  Add salt and pepper until it tastes good to you.  

Chop the chives

It should look like this when it is ready.
See the little canning jar?  Any little clean jar
or airtight container is fine for freezing pesto.

Scoop 1/3 of the pesto into a small canning jar, and 1/3 of it into another jar. Push the pesto into the jar with a spoon and smooth the top. Pour just a touch of olive oil over the pesto and pick up the jar to swirl it over the surface.  This helps to keep your pesto green.  Put on the lids on and screw them tight and freeze.

With the 1/3 of the fresh pesto that you have left you can make yummy chive pesto pasta.  Boil some noodles in salted water.  When they are done (not mushy), drain the water and pour a bit of olive oil over them.  Stir with a wooden spoon or spatula.  Add the pesto and stir over very low heat (especially if your pesto was in the fridge for a bit) until the noodles are covered.  Add a little salt if needed.

Sprinkle a few sunflower nuts or other seeds over
your pasta to give it a little crunch.

You can experiment with making pesto using different herbs and different kinds of nuts.  This was the first year I tried making chive pesto, and I think it is one of the best kinds!  

So, have fun making Chive Pesto while the sun shines!

Submitted by Linda.  

Students in the Kids Working to Succeed program are encouraged to try this and other recipes at home.

Freeze the Beans

 Green beans galore!  Whether you pick them in El Salvador or Wisconsin, ejotes or green beans often come in great number in a short time.  If you find yourself with an abundance of green beans, why not consider preserving them?

Freezing beans is very easy, and frozen beans taste great in the winter or dry season.  Follow these step by step instructions to safely preserve your green beans:

1)  Thoroughly wash the beans, being certain to rub off any soil that clings to the beans.

2)  Trim the ends off of the beans, and cut away any insect or critter damage or rusty spots.

3)  Use a stock pot and bring water to a boil.  Use enough water so that the beans can swim freely.  Dump the beans into the boiling water, keeping the heat on high.

4)  Wait until the water starts bubbling and set a timer for 4 minutes.  Let the beans boil for exactly 4 minutes.  Carefully remove the beans from the heat and dump them into a colander which is sitting in a big bowl of cold water or immediately run cold water over the beans.  (The

cold water stops the cooking process.)

5)  Make sure your hands are very clean or use a clean tongs and place beans immediately into freezer bags or clean containers.  (Beans will still be warm.)  Be sure to label the bags with the date and place them into the freezer.