Roasted Beet Tangle

This recipe is taken from the Beekman Heirloom cookbook. It's my first one for the month of October. Next weekend I'm planning another cook-a-thon of recipes strictly from the Beekman cookbook since I have a lot of friends coming over to cook with me and then eat it all. I've noticed that when I cook for myself, I wind up with tons of leftovers. It's great because then I don't have to cook and have easy lunches to pack. It's also not so great because then I'm not cooking as many recipes as I'd like to.

Anyway, back to this recipe.

If you had told me when I was a little kid that I would someday be cooking beets and eating them because I WANTED TO, I would not have believed you. I was pretty sure that when I grew up, I was going to eat a lot of happy meals and donuts.

Thank God I didn't turn out that way. (I think fast food is pretty gross. That whole fry-drate campaign McDonald's has going on makes me gag every time I see one of the billboards when I'm driving. All I can think of is someone drinking greasy, salty fries. Ugh.)

I don't often cook with beets, and I didn't eat them often when I was little. If I did, they were canned beets. I remember reading about how the juices were used as a dye in an old book series I had when I was a little kid. I've been finding myself appreciating the colors of food more the more I cook. Especially if I'm using fresh ingredients and going to local farmer's markets or harvest festivals.

I like this recipe because it uses two main parts of the beet. It doesn't use the stems, but who wants to eat those anyway? Bugs. Rabbits. NOT PEOPLE.

So there are my beets separated from my greens all nice and washed.

Then I wrapped them in aluminum foil, keeping beets of a similar size together.

This recipe isn't out there online, but I found a really similar one here. The only difference is that I didn't use onions in mine.

I cooked the beets in the oven at 425 degrees FOREVER. (More like an hour and fifteen minutes.)

I cooked the greens separately with a little oil and some chopped up garlic. I like watching greens wilt down over heat.

When the greens were cooked and the beets were done, I added them together. Then I made a dressing out of oil, lemon juice, and mustard. (Guess which mustard? If you're thinking the Two Bears mustard, you're totally correct. That would make this recipe number two for that little quest.)

I poured that over the top, and BOOM.

I be rockin' dem beets.

What? That's not a bad joke. That's an awesome joke.

The beets were actually tasty. (Maybe because they're not from a can. Gee whiz mom, get on this.)