Let's talk beets.

Last winter I made my first real acquaintance with beets. I had never considered eating them until I tried one sliced and roasted. Delicious! My RFC co-blogger Erin taught me how to cook beets just right: cut them up into bite-sized pieces, drizzle and coat them in olive oil, then roast in the oven at 400 until al dente. Now that the yearly love affair with tomatoes, sweet pepper and squash has come to a temporary close, it's time again to start enjoying beets.

It seems like most people, like me, tend to overlook beets as a culinary option. Perhaps they were forced to consume stewed beets from a can as children, or in general are repulsed by anything that is squishy and red. Or maybe some people have just forgotten about beets. In any case, they're worth a second look. In addition to being one of the most vibrantly colored winter vegetables (sometimes I just get sick of orange, though butternut squash, pumpkin and sweet potatoes are all delicious), they are incredibly good for you, with the usual quantities of cancer-fighting nutrients and anti-heart disease agents folate, manganese, potassium, dietary fiber and Vitamin C.

The best way to eat beets is as part of a salad. They provide a delicious textural counterpoint to greens, fresh fruit and nuts. I love the flavor so much, though, that I will sometimes just serve them as a stand-alone side dish. Other ways of cooking beets include baking, stewing, or pickling them, or adding them to vegetable juice mixes.

Chioggia Beets -- how can you resist a vegetable with stripes? I'm growing a solid red variety, but Chioggias are available through Southern Exposure!

On the grower's end, a compelling aspect of beets is their hardiness and versatility as a garden vegetable. They are a perfect illustration of the concept of what I'm calling 'garden root cellaring.' This is how most people extend their garden harvests on into the winter: plant vegetables towards the end of the season, so that they are generally large enough to eat by the time the temperature turns cold. As the winter days go on, most cold-tolerant plants will fall into a kind of winter-induced stasis, refusing to grow but also refusing to die. As you are ready to eat them, you can gradually harvest these vegetables one at a time, leaving the rest inside the ground, waiting inside a cool, natural 'root cellar.' My beets are a bit small because we planted them in early October, which means they had less time to strengthen and get big before the frost. Still, they are surviving, and, of course, delicious! The Southern Exposure Seed Exchange catalog, in its handy guide to planting dates, recommends that us Richmonders plant beet seeds between August and September 7th for a winter harvest, and March to April 15th for a summer one (you can keep planting them all the way through mid-May, though hot and dry weather may result in a tough and stringy root). This said, you can get beets at the farmer's market during the first half of the season or so, but they always seem to come into the spotlight in the winter, when the range of vegetables narrows to only the ones that happen to also be cold hardy.

If you're growing beets for the first time, or plan to, here's a tip for checking the size without pulling up the whole root: just scrape the dirt at the base of the plant and feel the top of the root with your fingers. You can estimate the size this way, and won't waste beets by pulling them up too small.

My beets are thriving, in spite of those pesky weeds...I guess I forgot to mulch -- oops! I'm positive my beets would be bigger if I'd been more vigilant.

Let's not forget beets are in the same vegetable family as swiss chard, meaning that their leaves are also delicious and full of nutrients. Beet greens can be treated the exact same way as collards, chard, tatsoi, pak choi or spinach -- sauted with garlic and olive oil, added to salads or incorporated into soups. So, if you get the chance, give beets a try: they're easy to grow (remember: this is my first year of gardening!) and absolutely delicious to eat.