Beet Hand

I love beets, I eat quite a lot of them. So I often have "beet hand". Yes, I know there are ways to avoid this, but I usually don't. One day I was out and about running errands and I found myself hiding my beet hands. Why? Back in the 80's I had beet colored hair. It took quite a bit of work on my part to keep up that intense beet color. Believe me, I maintained it for years. People paint their nails shocking colors. Maybe one day beet hand will be all the rage.

We eat beets plain and simple, as here for part of our tea time snack. Of course we eat them in salads and sauteed with their greens in garlic. But last week I tried something new.

I was making a cake roll which I usually make with pumpkin puree. Not having any pumpkin,  I pureed a couple of small pre-cooked beets and threw them in the batter. Can you believe this amazing color?! So, beautiful and all natural. I thought it may not be too good, the batter tasted a little bit too "beety". I was wrong.

This cake was so good! It was delicious and in no way did it taste like veggies. The deep red color is intense. There is no butter or oil in this cake, but the beets make it very moist. I have never liked red velvet cake because I taste the bitter red food coloring. If you like the look of red cake, but hate the unhealthy dye this is certainly the way to go.

 My desire for more and more color went too far with this one. I was pickling beets and had some room in the jar. Not wanting to waste that lovely color (and flavor), I put in a few hard boiled eggs. Apparently I left them in to long, because...eek! Looks like some day-glo radioactive thing that should never be eaten. Not very appetizing.  Oh well, you can't experiment without having a few blunders. The pickled beets turned out pretty good anyway despite sharing their jar with the crazy eggs.