Beets

Beets!  

They have been staring at me recently at the grocery store... whispering... "I'd be so beautiful as a puree..."  and "look at how dark and pretty I am..." and "you know you want me..."

But the mom in me is whispering back... "oh but it'll take so long..." and "I have a headache..."


I have been thinking lately about making food fun colors, and beets are perfect for that.  They were on sale, so I gave in to the seductive whispering, and bought some.

Fun colors aren't exactly hidden veggies... well, okay, they are not at all hidden veggies, but they are a fun and different way to incorporate more veggies, so we'll count it!  Plus the whole point of this vegetable blog is really to eat more and different veggies, and we are doing just that. 

So, I chopped them, boiled them (saved that beautiful water), pureed them, and you know what?  They were right.  They might not be the most humble vegetable, but look how beautiful the color is: 

I went right to work, and within minutes I had thin beet puree, thick beet puree, beet juice, beet popsicles, and plans for lots of pink food.  Liiiiiike, pink mashed potatoes!   (I swear this is not play-doh!)

We had these for dinner tonight.  They are just regular 'ole mashed potatoes with enough beet puree to barely taste it if you thought about it really hard.  The research team loved them!


The verdict:

"These mashed potatoes can't be beet!"


My research team thinks we should name these potatoes "hard to beet potatoes" but I like "play-doh 'tatoes," what do you guys think?      

Here is a picture of the beet juice, which is made from the water the beets were boiled in.  I added a little maple syrup to sweeten it, and also a little lemon juice.  In the plastic cup on the left is the beet juice, and my research team added orange juice to his, it's on the right.

The juice is okay.  I know this is going to come as a shock but.... it tastes like beets.  :)  I'm going to give it a couple days and see if it grows on me or if I can tweak it.  My two year old drank all of his, so that wasn't an issue!  Now I know what to give him when he requests juice!  Bwaaahahahah, now that's hidden veggies!


ps.  Do you see red velvet cake in the future?  I do!