Beets

I have had the weirdest craving lately for pickled beets.

Beets were not normal food in our household when I was growing up. In our house, dinner was almost always accompanied by a fresh, green salad, but there was nary a beet to be seen. I don't think beets were considered kid-food, though I'm sure little Russian children eat borscht and are happy about it. I think it must be a textural issue, kind of mushy and slimy to a child's palate.

I think I first encountered the common use of beets in New Zealand and Australia, where they came standard on every sandwich and hamburger. Even if you were careful to specify "NO BEETS," your food would come with a big fat purple slice on it anyway. At the time, I thought this was weird in the extreme. Now, I think it's a brilliant idea to put a slice of beet on a sandwich. (Hamburgers also came normally with lettuce, cheese, pickles, tomato, peppers and a whole fried egg, in addition to the requisite slab of what they called beet-root. It had to be nibbled sideways, because there was just no fitting it in your mouth upright).

Then I discovered pickled baby beets one summer in Illinois, introduced to me by my mother-in-law, as a side dish on the dinner table. They were crisp and wonderful, and from then on, every salad bar that featured beets had a guaranteed taker in me.

And now, I can't get enough of them. I have jars stashed in the fridge, and spares in the pantry. Every night I make a salad of spinach and greens, leftover veggies and a piece of chicken or fish, and plenty of tasty little beets.

I'm picky about it though. At Yoder's Market or at the Farmer's Market in town, I stare into the murky purple-juice depths of each jar, making sure I'm buying whole tiny beets, not cut-up chunks of older, tougher beets.

I am such a foodie-dork.