Beets Me (As If I Carrot All)

I am beginning to think that the single most important element of our (CM's and mine, with my folks at their place) gardening experiments during the past few seasons was the addition of several types of root vegetables to the staple storage crops, which had primarily previously been focused on the good ol' Potatoes & Onions.  By "storage" I mean those which can be stored for the winter without (blanching and bagging and) freezing, (boiling and peeling and) canning, pickling, drying, etc.--basically the ones you can stick in a dark cold place and leave alone for months on end and come back when you're hungry (or cleaning) to find them not only a) there but b) looking pretty good for their age and also c) (somewhat surprisingly) delicious.

Until two years ago, I had no idea I loved parsnips.  After our first bumper crop, I went from eating maybe on average A parsnip a year to--during a time when I (of all people!) had lost not only my appetite but my recollection of which foods had ever appealed to me in the past--actually craving those inscrutable roots...there's really nothing quite like a parsnip, you find out after spending a good long winter trying to figure out what the hell to do with the next bag full of them.  They keep like gangbusters (whatever that means) and adapt quite nicely to dishes in which you might not expect to find them, like stir-fries and curries, as well as being an indispensable friend to soups and pot roasts.  Curried parsnip soup has become a favorite of mine, for the deep freeze...Sweet, rich, hearty, mellow and spicy, they're easy to grow and hard to get rid of, but only because they keep forever...

So anyway, here I am, in July, just now getting around to using the last of last year's parsnips, rutabagas, beets and carrots.  What kind of gardener is thinking about--much less writing about--root vegetables in the tender young days of summer, when she should be enjoying peas and lettuces, if not tomatoes and cucumbers??  Well, the kind who left her roots in storage (at my folks' amazingly "naturally" temperature-controlled environment within the concrete walls of the old barn and shop) and then in the fridge for the better part of a year... The kind who is not afraid to see what will happen when you leave a beet in a bag for 10 times its actual lifespan, or to shave the whiskers off an old carrot, scrub the feller down and give it the old college try... The kind who believes in finding out for yourself just how long it really takes for something to go bad...

As it turns out, the carrots we pulled from the ground ten months ago are still bright and crisp, and still tastier than any you can buy in a store (not that I've bought any lately...).  My beets, which I'll admit most non-beet-loving-persons would probably have just tossed without a second thought, upon peeling revealed themselves to be not only of firmest flesh but also sugar-sweet, much to my surprise (and I'll have you know I tasted each and every, raw).  The dark reds (either Detroits or Early Wonders) were outstanding, the Chioggias quite passable and the Goldens merely edible (if in distress.).  Knowing that we (novices) are capable of growing food which might carry us all the way through from one eating season to the next is actually a pretty big deal to me, considering all there is to consider...and after all this time, with my own "wanna be" garden months behind the rest of the growing world's, to be sustained by the promise of a seed planted long ago is (though nothing at all like a sea scallop) rather an exquisite delicacy.  Yum for now...

I suppose you could say that the roots can take us full circle, if that's not too far out...