My First Beet

I thank two authors, Amy Dacyczyn (The Tightwad Gazette) and Jack Monroe (Cooking on a Bootstrap) for inspiring me to continue to learn how to cook on a fixed income with limited skills.

While Amy's book is not a cookbook, it contains several recipes where she illustrates how to reduce your food budget and still make nutritious meals. With Amy, I did not always have to have PB&J and potato chips for dinner or McD's sausage burrito for breakfast and lunch. Some of my favorite Tightwad Gazette recipes are "The Universal Casserole", "Apple Crisp" and "Cuban Bread."

Jack inspires me to try new recipes. While I don't always succeed, today, I cooked my first beet. Beets fascinate me. The only beets I have ever had are pickled beets in a jar. A real beet looks odd to me, while it has a beautiful shape, it is the color of dirt and it's hard for me to imagine how to cook it so someday it could become a pickled beet.

(1 dragonfruit, 1 chayote, 2 patty pan squash, 1 zucchini, 1 camote, and 1 beet)

The beet is at the bottom of the picture. I went to a local market and picked up a few vegetables and a dragonfruit. I continue to try and increase the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables I eat, so I have to learn to prepare them.

I used Jack's recipe "Jacket Beetato" (https://cookingonabootstrap.com/2018/02/13/jacket-beetroot-recipe/) as inspiration to try and cook a beet. In essence, I cooked the beet like a potato.


Cooked Beet

I just washed the beet bulb and pierced it with a fork in a few places. Put it on a plate and microwaved it on high for 5 minutes.

I cut and quartered the cooked beet and peeled off the skin. I ate a few bites plain. It was good with that beet sweetness.

While the beet was cooked, not sure it is totally mashable. Do not know if I microwaved for 1-2 minutes more it would have been easily mashable.

I saved the remaining beet chunks. I do not know what I will do with them later. At the moment, I don't have much to top cooked beet with that seems suitable but I will bet cold beet chunks will taste good, too.