Even though I'm not a huge Valentine's Day fan (on scale of 1 to tacky, Valentine's Day scores a Dollywood with me) I AM a huge food fan. This is a quick, cute and easy way to wear your heart on your side dish
This year I wanted to do a Valentine's food that's easy you could serve for Valentine's Day - beets.
They're red, they're delicious (unless you don't like them in which case they taste like dirt with a hint of moth) and I have a bunch of them in my cold cellar.
My cold cellar is actually an old pantry in my mud room where I also store my extra baking pans, cases of diet coke, boots and a 15 year old jar of "Glow in the Dark" lawn dust which you sprinkle on your lawn to make it glow in the dark.
I don't know why I, or anyone else would own glow in the dark lawn dust but I presume it's to make your lawn the most attractive lawn in the neighbourhood to alien visitors.
You can serve these hot as a side dish or chill them to serve them cold in a salad.
Table of Contents
Materials
- Beets
- Heart shaped cookie cutter
Method
- Cook the beets.
- Slice them.
- Cut them with a small heart shaped cookie cutter.
Then you can either pile them into a nice little stack like I did in the photo above, or lay them out flat like I've done in the photo below.
How to cook beets
I cook beets by wrapping them in 2 layers of tinfoil and then baking them in the oven at 375F until they're done. Let the beets cool a bit and then grab them with a paper towel and slide off the beet skin.
What better way to say "I heart you" and "I heart beets" all at the same time?
If you want to get fancy you can add a little bit of dressing to the beets with some crumbled goat's cheese and a few crushed nuts or seeds like pecans or pumpkin seeds. In fact, I almost always have a jar of this dressing in my fridge.
Dressing for Beets
Ingredients
- 2 Tablespoons Balsamic Vinegar
- 6 Tablespoons Olive Oil
- 1 teaspoon Dijon Mustard
- 1 teaspoon honey
- 1-2 sprigs of fresh thyme leaves if you can be bothered
- dash of Salt & Pepper
Instructions
- Add your balsamic to the bowl first.
- Mix in dijon, honey, thyme leaves, salt and pepper.
- Slowlyyyyyy drizzle in olive oil while whisking.
If you're the type who is never going to make the dressing, just add goat's cheese to the beets. That alone will make them infinitely more delicious.
Now if you'll excuse me I have some very demanding aliens to entertain.
I'm not a fan of cooked beets - agree with the hilarious description "taste like dirt with a hint of moth"...
But I do love, love, love pickled beets, as long as it is the vinegary recipe and not the sweet recipe.
The pickled beets I make are both sweet and vinegary. ~ karen!
I think the Glow In The Dark Lawn Dust deserves a post all its own. Tell us more.
Thank you for beeting here everyday for my free dose of Karen - you are loved!
I can’t rate a recipe I will never make. Like Randy, I fall under the category of detesting them. Unlike Randy, I love cilantro. At first, I too found it to have a soap-like flavor but I’d add it also has a metallic taste. I also found that when mixed with finely chopped onion, there’s a harmonious quality. I use cilantro in many different ways- it’s traditionally used in Mexican, Asian and Mediterranean recipes. I get it though, if one can’t stand a certain flavor, no amount of argumentative discourse can change it. My top most disturbing flavor is feta. I gag. It makes me physically retch. The smell drives me out of enclosed spaces. I associate all goat products with feta and can smell it like a trained cadaver dog. Nope.
I was in a small (very small) airport in Greece when an 86 year old already smelly woman dropped a bigass glass jar of her homemade feta that is traditionally soaked in a liquid which I’m guessing is vampire tears and goat urine. The stench drove me and most of the Greeks out the doors screaming like we were running from a showing of Pink Flamingos in a burning theatre. Or is it “theater”? I get the two mixed up and when I really care I look it up.
Back to beets. I was forced to eat canned beets as a form of torture to remind me of starving ethnicities as a kid. I gagged and tears dripped into the bowl of an entire can of purple red death in sliced form and had to drink the juice. Yes, I know fresh beets are not even closely related to that can of horror. I’ve bravely tasted them in different culinary settings where they’ve been prepared by kitchen artists. They in no way resemble the torture variety except a bit of earth in the background. But in the cobweb corner of my mind where the voice of Vincent Price or Rod Serling make announcements, I’m told I’ll die if I eat them.
They are a beautiful color. They don’t stink like 6 year old filthy sweat socks which are an ingredient of Feta.
Thanks Karen. Keep on rockin’ in the free world.
Enjoyed your comment! If you are interested in why you react to cilantro when others do not - I posted a reply to Randy below with that info.
Mary, I’ve also read about a missing enzyme. I can definitely taste all forms of soap but my favorite to eat is Irish Spring. I won’t bathe in that crap but it’s yummy on pasta when you add garlic and butter. Just like garden snails, anything can be palatable with enough butter and garlic.
I’m guessing, since my initial reaction to cilantro, back in the dark ages, was to taste the metallic soapy flavor, I have the enzyme but for some weirdo reason, perhaps related to seeing a Yes concert when I was in highscool (nod to Karen’s spelling) while being under the influence of LSD, made me like cilantro even though I tasted metal soap. Mind expansion or as Joe Friday said in 1967 or ‘68 on Dragnet “YOU MIGHT LOOK IN A MIRROR AND SEE YOUR FACE MELT AND YOU’ll DEVELOP A DEPENDENCY ON THIS STUFF” or maybe you’ll just like metallic soap flavored food, say “groovy” and laugh at Monty Python.
Picture from that Dragnet episode known as “Blue Boy” by LSD taking hippy draft dodgers is a cult favorite.
Well........ I luv ya' more than is probably healthy or normal, but I'm gonna take a hard pass on the whole "beets" thing. Yes they taste like dirt, the same as cilantro to me tastes like soap. And I'd rather eat a dirty moth than either. But the salad dressing sounds marvelous, so thanks for sharing the recipe.
Those that think cilantro tastes like soap are missing an enzyme that destroys the soap taste. Other people have that enzyme and don't even know that they are eating soap. I normally love everything and had to research why I just couldn't eat even one tiny piece of a small leaf of it.