Editor’s note: Welcome to Almost Fit. This post is this week’s Friday Fit recipe. The idea is to try “real food” recipes that can be prepared on the weekend. Of course, each recipe can also be prepared during the week (that’s when I’m trying it), but with the hectic schedules of most, a recipe might be easier to try on the weekend when work is generally less of a factor. If you enjoy this article, please consider subscribing to my feed. Thanks.

In case you haven’t guessed from the title of this post, I have a very long and fragmented relationship with beets that has always teetered between love(occasionally) and hate (mostly), good and evil, starvation-if-that’s-all-there-is and, well, ok-I’ll-try-it-again-but-I-KNOW-I-won’t-like-it. I have never been a beet fan; I mean it’s pretty amusing from a geek standpoint that eating beets does all kinds of weird things to color your vital organs and their perfunctory processes (as in the next morning, groggily shouting, “HOLY CRAP! Why am I bleeding internally?!? Oh. Nevermind.”), but other than that, I’ve always felt that beets taste rather like, well, dirt.

Who knew I would develop a taste for dirt?

As part of our organic garden project this year my wife convinced me to cast aside my skepticism, and despite my gut instincts, grow beets (Oh, the horror.). I mention this because it’s a key distinction between what I knew of beets as a child (my, “beets? Not so much.” phase), and how good they can actually taste when you grow them yourself. And now that we’re here in beet season, well, it’s time for the rubber to hit the road with this whole, “eat seasonal” thing I’m always talking about.

I grew up feeling that beets were a mysterious form of food torture that was concocted by some closeted sadistic department of the Del Monte canning company. In fact I also saw a certain movie when I was young involving Charlton Heston, that although the food he was afraid of was technically green in color, I was convinced that beets had to be somehow involved. See the video at the end of the recipe to see what I mean.

No, in our case, I discovered that when you roast beets that you’ve pulled fresh from the garden, something miraculous happens: They do NOT become magical purple jello globs that are capable of sliding out of a can, already sliced. No, friends, these beets are food-like, almost as if they were related to other familiar root vegetables that I love, rather than the eggs of extraterrestrials that are preparing to terrorize the globe.

I found, much to my chagrin, that I actually like them. Well, mostly. I still reserve the adolescent right to complain about it.

Friday Fit Recipe #12: The “I Hate Beets. What am I Doing Eating Beets?” Beet Salad

This beet salad is ideally made with leftover roasted beets. You can roast them the same day if you like, but roasting generally takes about an hour, and then you have to let them cool. In our case, we usually roast a larger batch of beets for dinner, and then use the leftovers the next afternoon or evening in this salad.

Ingredients

Green leaf lettuce, the darker the better
Handful of fresh mint leaves
6 medium-sized roasted and peeled beets (roasted in olive oil with salt and pepper), refrigerated
10 to 12oz. Goat cheese, feta, or paneer – whatever you have/prefer
Basic balsamic vinaigrette (3 parts oil to 1 part good balsamic vinegar, with herbs to taste)
Salt and pepper

Serves: 4 beet lovers, or 9 billion non-beet lovers

Preparation

Cut the skinned, refrigerated beets into roughly bite-sized chunks. Tear or chop the lettuce into bite-sized pieces. Combine the beets, lettuce, mint leaves, and balsamic vinaigrette in a large salad bowl and toss. Salt and pepper to taste. crumble the cheese on top and serve.

To Serve

Serve as a side dish with protein. It goes particularly well with chicken or fish, in our experience.

Options

This recipe is also great with fresh spinach rather than lettuce. For the photo, we happened to have some herbed paneer from our local dairy resource, which was wonderful. I don’t know that I’ve seen herbed paneer anywhere else, but we’ve also had this salad with goat cheese, as well as feta, and it is excellent.

And finally….

For all my film geek friends out there, I couldn’t resist. Just insert “Beets” when you hear the word “Green”, and you’ll get the idea. Nobody ever said that soylent green didn’t taste good. 

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