Savoring the harvest: Drink-your-beets borscht

by June

Beets are beautiful and sweet and fun to grow. We love our beets.

When I pull a bunch from the garden, I admire them for a while, sometimes a long while. Their leaves are beautiful, veined through with fuchsia. And the globes themselves are very satisfying for a gardener to hold in the palm of her hand, that hefty roundness. Admiring a beet, I feel like a hen considering her egg.

My favorite way to prepare beets is roasted at high heat (about 400 degrees F). I rub them with olive oil and nestle them together in foil. It usually takes about a half hour for fresh beets to reach the point where they can be pierced by a knife (about the consistency of cold butter). If I don't have to peel them then, I don't.  I pop them into the fridge to save for quick preparation of a summer meal. They peel very easily when they are chilled, and it's simpler to slice them, chunk them or grate them when it's not like playing hot potato. We eat them every which way.

Recently, I had about a cup of leftover grated beets. They were dressed in a bit of olive oil and a dribble of balsamic vinegar. I tossed them into the blender with some fresh dill, a diced shallot, and a cup of vegetable stock. I whirred it all together, then added a dollop of sour cream and another of yogurt. I put it into the fridge to really chill.

Later, the four of us sat on the porch and sipped a sweet, pink soup that tasted so deeply of our garden that it reminded me of all the pleasures of growing beets: the grainy little seed getting poked in the soil, the first ruby knuckle sprouting up, the beautiful leaves turning glossy and tall, and then the bulb swelling into sight. That simple soup was what makes feeding ourselves from the garden irresistible.