View from the North 40: The beet definitely will go on

My husband doesn’t like beets. I do like beets. This is, I'll admit, inconsequential and the beet-thing obviously hasn’t been a deal breaker in this marriage or much of a “thing” at all (and you know what I mean by “thing” if you’re married).

However, there’s always room for escalation, though, right?

I like fresh-boiled beets, canned beets, pickled beets. John hates them all, especially pickled beets. I even like commercially canned and pickled beets. John hates those the most. John would rather eat lutefisk — reconstituted, lye-soaked, twice-boiled fish — than a small, sweet, colorful root vegetable plucked fresh from the earth.

We hold this truth to be self-evident, because he reminds me whenever beets are mentioned or seen or smelled, John hates beets. It’s a law of nature, as well, like gravity.

Here’s another truth: Cook controls the menu.

See? I told you I could make this worse.

A few weeks ago I was feeling like I had gotten into a rut, just cooking with the same kinds of produce over and over in different configurations, so I bought a rutabaga and a beet.

I don’t know why I picked those two root veggies for inspiration. I’m not a big rutabaga fan. They just seemed like the homey, old-fashioned vegetables one should eat.

I powered on and put some rutabaga in a beef soup that was so hearty it was almost a stew. John was pretty alright with the experiment. For my part, the rutabaga didn’t kill me at all.

But you know you can eat arsenic in small doses and live on without being any the wiser.

Saving the soup from being overwhelmed by rutabaga, though, meant that I had half of it left over and no real plan or desire for finishing it off. I had that beet, too, and it didn’t have a plan or any plans attached to it, either — just my hopes and dreams.

One day I just sliced both of them up and fried them in olive oil and butter in my old cast iron pan, then salt-and-peppered them and served them with lunch.

It was a bold move, plainly executed like good, old-fashioned cooking. Yeah, of course, it wasn’t a Food Chanel moment like that sounds.

Slicing and frying the two veggies was the quickest, simplest thing I could do — aside from throwing them in the microwave for a couple minutes — to get this experiment over with.

Whatever. It worked, so I was happy. John went back for seconds of the fried beet, with this resounding endorsement: “I did not hate that.”

With so much encouragement, I bought another one

Last night, I put half of the beet into what I can best describe as an “Asian-inspired” meal. I just jumped right in there and chopped that beet up and fried it with the rest of the vegetables — which all turned a spectacularly vibrant color with that deep red, beet-colored tint.

I served the meal without saying anything, almost as if John had once said, “By golly, my darling dumplin' pie, those beetroots are a magical food that make everything better.”

You know what, though? Even the beet-hater thought it was another masterpiece of a meal, although he ate it with the hunger and wary attitude of a caged animal being fed tranquilizers in an unidentified meat product.

“Don’t push your luck,” he said.

I don’t know why he’s suspicious. He should know me better than that and be totally confident that, of course, I’m going to take this beet-thing too far.

I will find his breaking point.

——

Duh, at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40.com/.