The winter solstice has passed, but winter has just begun. It's time to start digging deep into the pantry, larder and cold frames for hot winter comfort food--starting with beets. If you were traumatized by slimy canned beets as a kid, it's time for some memory-re-adjustment. Beets are the source of much of the sugar you eat every day, which should tell you something about how sweet they are.
This year I grew six different beet varieties, some I'd grown before and some new to me. I'm forced to admit I was very impressed with the production and flavor of Kestral, and F1 hybrid -- I'm usually pretty adamant about growing open-pollination varieties but I make exceptions for F1 hybrids especially when I 'know' the seed breeder, like Vermont's own High Mowing Seeds.
But the biggest Wow in the beet patch this year was the Lutz Long Keeper, a OP Heirloom that grows quite bit. I picked a few of these through the fall for use as the other beets ran out, but I left about a dozen in the ground until the bitter end -- early December, just as the long, late warm autumn was about to crash into the single digits. I dug up the beets and the last of the turnips and rutebagas and put them in buckets in the garage with a bunch of dirt over them -- lacking a root cellar, a huge deficiency in my life.
I pulled the bucket into the kitchen today and washed and sorted the beets and turnips, putting all the golf-ball-sized ones in a bag in the bottom of the fridge for roasted mixed vegetables. The four largest beets I washed, trimmed, and put whole into a lidded casserole dish with some vegetable oil in the bottom. Set oven on 250 and left it for about four hours. Took the dish out and let it cool for a little while with the lid still on to keep the juices in there.
Then I toasted some chopped walnuts in a cast iron pan on the stove, peeled the beets and diced them, tossed them in a bowl with the walnuts and added crumbled blue cheese, the oil and beet juice from the roasting dish, and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar. Scooped a pile of it out over some fresh-picked microgreens mixed with mache and radicchio and a couple little chard, beet, and sorrel leaves from the cold frames.... heavenly!
It dawned on me that this simple garden-dug and window-sill-raised lunch of mine would cost a princely sum in a restaurant -- which got me pondering the concept of wealth. If you have tons of money, you get the privilege of being able to purchase food that humble cottagers grow in their front yards... that's ironic. Yet our society doesn't value the food or the farmer/gardener as much as the dollars that buy it. I guess I opted to just skip the whole intervening money-making part and grow the food myself. Yet even many of my friends who remained in urban areas don't get that -- they say, why do I want to spend all that time growing a carrot and having to touch dirt when I can pay someone else to do it for me?
I suppose that if the hours you spend making the money to buy your food are intellectually, spiritually and socially rewarding, then by all means, it's a better use of your time than growing your own food. But if your work is tedious and dull, or infuriating and soul-draining...
Think about digging in the dirt. There's great wealth to be found there. Where else can you plant a seed, watch your seedling grow, harvest the fruit, then close your eyes and savor the rich, sweet rewards on a snowy winters day?
This year I grew six different beet varieties, some I'd grown before and some new to me. I'm forced to admit I was very impressed with the production and flavor of Kestral, and F1 hybrid -- I'm usually pretty adamant about growing open-pollination varieties but I make exceptions for F1 hybrids especially when I 'know' the seed breeder, like Vermont's own High Mowing Seeds.
But the biggest Wow in the beet patch this year was the Lutz Long Keeper, a OP Heirloom that grows quite bit. I picked a few of these through the fall for use as the other beets ran out, but I left about a dozen in the ground until the bitter end -- early December, just as the long, late warm autumn was about to crash into the single digits. I dug up the beets and the last of the turnips and rutebagas and put them in buckets in the garage with a bunch of dirt over them -- lacking a root cellar, a huge deficiency in my life.
I pulled the bucket into the kitchen today and washed and sorted the beets and turnips, putting all the golf-ball-sized ones in a bag in the bottom of the fridge for roasted mixed vegetables. The four largest beets I washed, trimmed, and put whole into a lidded casserole dish with some vegetable oil in the bottom. Set oven on 250 and left it for about four hours. Took the dish out and let it cool for a little while with the lid still on to keep the juices in there.
Then I toasted some chopped walnuts in a cast iron pan on the stove, peeled the beets and diced them, tossed them in a bowl with the walnuts and added crumbled blue cheese, the oil and beet juice from the roasting dish, and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar. Scooped a pile of it out over some fresh-picked microgreens mixed with mache and radicchio and a couple little chard, beet, and sorrel leaves from the cold frames.... heavenly!
It dawned on me that this simple garden-dug and window-sill-raised lunch of mine would cost a princely sum in a restaurant -- which got me pondering the concept of wealth. If you have tons of money, you get the privilege of being able to purchase food that humble cottagers grow in their front yards... that's ironic. Yet our society doesn't value the food or the farmer/gardener as much as the dollars that buy it. I guess I opted to just skip the whole intervening money-making part and grow the food myself. Yet even many of my friends who remained in urban areas don't get that -- they say, why do I want to spend all that time growing a carrot and having to touch dirt when I can pay someone else to do it for me?
I suppose that if the hours you spend making the money to buy your food are intellectually, spiritually and socially rewarding, then by all means, it's a better use of your time than growing your own food. But if your work is tedious and dull, or infuriating and soul-draining...
