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Your Guide to Baking Beets Whole

So, you find yourself staring at a bunch of beets, wondering what on earth to do with them. Fear not, dear reader, for I am here to guide you through the wardrobe-staining experience of baking beets whole – a culinary adventure.

Selecting and Cleaning the Beets

First things first, let’s pick the perfect beets. You want them to be firm, smooth, and as perky as THOT. Look for ones with their greens still intact, a sign of freshness and vitality. Anything looking sad and droopy should be left on the shelf – we want beets that don’t look beaten. Isn’t that the kind of irony we expect from the world?  Trim off those leafy greens, leaving just a little bit of stem to keep the beets from getting too bleedy during their time in the oven.

Or, have you purchased a greenless 20lb bag of beets so small that peeling them seems like the kind of punishment outlawed in some countries? But they’re yours now, Sista!

Once you’ve found your beets, it’s time to give them a good rinse and scrub under cold water. Count, if you can, how many times you disassociate throughout this monotonous task and repeatedly return to find yourself still scrubbing the damned things. (They’re not looking like such a show-stopping deal anymore, are they?)

I digress.

But here’s the thing: the torture ends here. Because you’re going to bake your beets whole, you can skip the agony of peeling! Take this tiny win and throw your beets into a baking dish deep enough to catch potential drips.

Baking Beets Whole

Now, let’s get roasting! Preheat your oven to 375°F (190°C).

If you’ve got a few big, beautiful beets, you might consider wrapping each one in foil like a potato to seal in the moisture as it cooks. If your beets are small, you’ll want to wrap your baking dish in foil to seal all the beets at once. If you want to add a little flavour early in the process, you can dress them with a little olive oil, salt and pepper before wrapping them up. Adding 1 cup of water to the sealed baking dish will help steam the peels and make them easier to remove later.

Bake your beets whole on the middle rack for 45 minutes to an hour and increase time as needed. You’ll know your beets are done when you can slide a knife into them easily. Remove them from the oven and remove the aluminum foil to cool.

Peeling Your Whole Baked Beets

The following should be done with an apron and latex gloves if you’re clumsy and slightly careless, like yours truly. Otherwise, you could emerge from the kitchen looking like you just brutalized someone – but pinker.

Once you can comfortably touch your beets, you can start sliding their skins off with ease. It’s faster and easier than peeling them raw – and you get to keep all your knuckles!

Your beets are now cooked and ready to be used in a soup, salad or pickling brine. And while you could eat your baked beets whole, we recommend slicing them to your preference, depending on the application.

Dressing the Baked Beets Whole

Your beets can be dressed in so many delicious ways! Our favorite is:

  • Olive oil (good quality if you can)
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • Balsamic vinegar
  • Spring lettuce mix
  • Fresh chopped parsley, dill, basil and chives
  • Crumbed feta or soft goat cheese

These are ingredients that can be eyeballed and adjusted to taste. Need more beet salad recommendations? Check out this awesome beet salad dressing blog by the Happy Muncher.

Was it worth it?

Of all the root vegetables in the garden, beets have to be my favorite (with carrots trailing them closely). They are so many varieties to grow and ways to prepare them – and I haven’t yet tried one I didn’t like. There is something so comforting about their sweetness and their beauty that I could easily eat them every day. And I’ll probably have to, because I bought too many beets.

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Canning Jars, Lids, and Pressure Cookers – 3 Things You Should Know

When I started gardening, it all seemed fairly simple. Bury the seed, grow the seed, store the winnings. But it quickly became evident that the winnings I was accruing were being produced in numbers that my freezer just could not accommodate. Green beans, peas, carrots, and dozens of other crops were ready in the garden. Without another freezer and without a cold storage area, I was really going to miss out on sustained enjoyment. And that was the point of all this effort in the first place – food security! All at once I realized that I would need to have a future in canning if I wanted to make this work. But canning jars, lids, and ‘debubbling’ were all so foreign to me. Finally, I went on Marketplace and bought what seemed like a garage full of canning supplies from an older lady who was scaling back, and began the process of making mistakes, learning, and doing it all again. Here are three things I wish I knew when I started learning about canning meat and produce.

1: Used Lids Are Too Risky

When I bought boxes full of canning jars, lids and rings, I thought I was all set! The result was losing several jars to a poor seal. What I learned is that while it is perfectly fine to reuse rings and canning jars, lids (the flat top to your jar), and rings should be new. The reason is that the ring relies on achieving a seal between the glass and the rubber that lines the underside of the ring. After being used, or after being stored for too long, the rubber on the lid can dry out and become too rigid to hold a perfect seal. This results in much cussing from yours truly – after hours of canning work this is disappointment that I cannot bear and you shouldn’t either. If you’re new, buy new lids unless you have a seasoned canner in your life who can check them and advise. If your lid doesn’t seal, it will pop up and down when you press on it and, eventually, you will see signs of mold or other signs of spoilage on the food itself. If you don’t have a good seal on a jar – put it in the fridge to be used right away. Do not put this jar into storage, because the spoilage is a risk to anyone who eats it. And no one wants to die of a pickled beet.

2: You Can’t Water-Bath Everything

When I was young, I’d watch my grandmother water bath apple juice after picking the absolute abundance of apples in her modest yard. The process looked fairly simple, though there were lots of opportunities to burn myself so my involvement was limited to peeling apples. If I had been older, I’d have asked more questions and found out that, while you can water bath many things, you can’t water bath just as many – and it all comes down to the acidity of the item you’re canning and how much it needs to be cooked.

What is water-bath canning?

Water bath canning means that the sterile jars are packed with produce and then immersed in boiling water to process. This process is preferable (in my opinion) to pressure canning because you don’t need to mess with a pressure canner, weights, etc. Fruits and vegetables often have enough acidic properties (4.6 or below) to effectively kill bacteria in a water bath. Some things, like tomatoes, may need some added acid in the form of lemon juice, vinegar or citric acid before being water-bathed.

3: You’ll Need Some Hardware (canning jars, lids, seals…)

Anyone who tells you it’s cheap to get started with gardening and canning hasn’t purchased a pressure cooker, large stock pot, or the propane to run the show. While these are one-time expenses, it’s important to be aware of what you’ll need to ensure that you’ll have everything ready when you are. Remember, you’re saving a ton of money at the grocery store by canning your own meat and produce and you’ll be able to use it again and again. At minimum you’ll need:

  • A canning funnel
  • A stainless ladle (choose one that will be well-proportioned to the funnel you’re using)
  • A magnetic jar lifter (get one that’s rubberized to reduce slips)
  • A large stock pot or pressure cooker
  • A guide to canning times etc. (Ball makes a good one) or see this video of best canning and preserving books!

Embarking on a journey to master the use of canning jars, lids, and rings, can seem intimidating but it is a simpler process that you’ve likely conjured in your head. The real challenge is the time it takes to complete! Regardless, I’ve come to love canning and look forward to seeing all my jars neatly lined up in the pantry. It’s pretty, it’s easy to identify, and it is ready when you are – no thawing required!

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Five Ways to Survive the Parent Teacher Interview

There are some things about parenting that seem to go either one way or another. Either you are blessed with reasonable, flexible, and compliant kids and breeze through life, or you live in the other blessed land. One of heart palpitations every time the school’s name pops up on your phone. Two roads diverged at some point, I suppose.

Remembering the parent teacher interview

Why We Do It

There are many things I’d rather do than answer that potentially explosive phone call. An injury? An incident? Another panic attack? All potential treasures to behold… but if I’m honest, nothing used to top the anxiety, nothing made me want to stay home forever more, than the parent teacher interview. But, it’s necessary for all the right reasons, and with time I have learned that it is possible to attend one of these meetings without tearily hitting-up an ice cream machine on the way home. And you love your kids, so on we march.

Here are five ways you can survive and thrive through a parent teacher interview, even (and especially) if your kiddo is struggling.

1: Address Your Child’s Anxiety First

Sometimes when I have to find words to support my child, I find myself feeling better, too. In this case, you can empathize about the pressure they may be feeling and put their mind at ease. That’s because you’ve been keeping regular communication with the teacher and any hiccups have been dealt with immediately beforehand. The parent teacher interview is not the time for bringing up issues that have already been addressed regarding behaviour or other aspects of your child’s school life. Your meeting should have a broader focus and put as much emphasis on success that your child is having than the support they continue to need. So, reassure your child (and yourself) that there won’t be any embarrassing surprises. To ensure this is possible, do keep in good contact with the teacher by email, text or whatever works best to make sure these conversations are timely.

2: Reassure Yourself

When things are challenging for your kiddo at school, it can be difficult to walk through those halls with your nose in the air, feeling great. But the reality is, if you’re anything like me, you’re so hyper-focused on your anxiety about being judged by a teacher or malevolent ex that you can hardly keep your shit together just to get to the room (and your nose is probably pointing straight at the floor – just like your eyes).

The reality is that the fact that you’re showing up means something to this teacher. They’ve been putting a lot of hours in with your kiddo – in fact, they probably see more of your kid than you do. Remember, you’re not there to discuss your parenting, so judgment is off the table. You’re there to discuss your child’s needs and progress during the hours that the school is responsible for their care and development. The spotlight is not on you here – it’s on your child’s teacher.

3: Acknowledge the Complexity

We often forget that our children are entities of their own – entirely separate from us. As much as we can use our influence to coach our children into making good decisions, the reality is that we have no control over whether they make them or not. Once a parent understands this fully, it becomes easier for them to have some compassion for their own experience in this parenting thing.

A parent teacher interview

Whether there are challenges around academic performance, social integration or behavior, or any of the myriad of difficulties that can face our young children, it weighs heavy on the parent. We do ourselves a favor when we don’t add guilt to our cauldron of emotions. We have to honor our children’s right to agency as they get older, whether we like what that looks like – or not.

So, show up as a part of your child’s team. Show up as a curious investigator ready to help. Show up as tough love if you have to. But don’t show up embodying a victim of the teacher’s potential scorn. Just as above, the energy you use imagining judgment is stolen from your sense of calm and your ability to be objective and act as a problem solver.

4. Come to the Parent Teacher Interview With Questions

Your questions will help better inform your understanding of your son or daughter’s successes and challenges.

  • Where does he/she need more support?
  • How do we access more support?
  • Where is he/she improving or excelling?
  • Can we get a plan in motion?
  • What can we do to assist at home?
  • How is his/her education program plan supporting him/her? Could the program plan benefit from some changes?
  • Need more ideas? Click here

5. Show Appreciation

Let’s be real: the parent/teacher relationship can be challenging in some ways. If this is the case, it may be even more important to maintain regular contact with the teacher and to show appreciation for the things that they do for your child. Like you, teachers are often exhausted parents. A little thank you goes a long way because although all teachers should offer fair and equal treatment all the time – they are humans trying to regulate their emotions, also.

Successful parent teacher interview

You might thank them for:

  • The time they took with you today
  • The patience they show while working with your child
  • The attention they give to your child’s needs
  • Treating your child fairly
  • An email that they sent
  • The extras they do behind the scenes

The parent teacher interview is notoriously disliked by parents of children with challenges at school. These tips allow you to put them into perspective and make the most of the time you have with such an important and influential person in your child’s life.

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How to Grow Garlic From A Clove

Of all the plants in the garden, none have made such an impact on our culinary lifestyle as garlic. Not only is it an important ingredient in a vast array of cooking traditions from Italian to Mediterranean, Asian, and Middle Eastern, it has even made its way into folklore and myths as a way to ward off evil spirits and vampires. And while almost every person on planet Earth couldn’t do without it, my mother complains every time it is used – without fail. My conclusion? Mother is a vampire. Explains her love of ballroom dance.

Keeping My Mother Out of Your Garden

Whether you’re plagued by vampires or not, you can never have enough garlic in the garden, in my opinion. Learning how to grow garlic from a clove begins with timing – the clove(s) needs to be planted in mid-to-late fall. Where I live, that means that I can use my garden beds all summer for their entire season and plant garlic going into the off-season. Early spring brings bright green shoots bursting through the soil. By the end of March, the garlic in the garden is offering beautiful and welcome green to the scene. In June, the garlic is ready, and my garden bed becomes available for the next crop of carrots or beets to grow in their place while the garlic dries. Okay, Okay, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s start at the beginning:

Choose Your Weapon

If you’ve never paid much attention, you might think there’s only one kind of vampire repellant on the market. But with a little interest, you’ll find that there are garlic heads in all kinds of shapes, sizes and varieties! Whether you’re looking for a compact variety for spicy impact or elephant garlic for its mild garlicky boost, just grow what you like to eat!

Hard or Soft Neck?

Garlic comes in two distinct variations – hardneck and softneck. Hardneck generally have a punchier taste, woodier paper and will produce a scape. A garlic scape is a delicacy that grows upward from the garlic stalk before the garlic is ready. It is generally cut once it has grown one full turn and is pointing upward again. Enjoy these scapes chopped, pickled or sauteed for a mild boost. Softneck varieties don’t produce a scape, but they can be braided into the long, beautiful braids you see hanging from the rafters in Italy. Most garlic at the grocery store are softneck varieties because they have a longer shelf life.

While I like to recommend visiting a local farm or nursery to buy the healthiest heads of garlic, in a pinch you can even grow garlic from the supermarket. Either way, look for healthy-looking bulbs with unbroken skin.

Before you can grow garlic from a clove, it needs to be broken away from its neighbouring cloves in the rest of the head. Break down your chosen heads of garlic into cloves by gently pulling them apart but don’t remove their protective paper. If your efforts are successful, each of these cloves will become a whole head of garlic.

Prep Your Medium

Grow Garlic From a Clove
Grow Garlic From a Clove

When growing garlic from a clove, the plant will do best in rich soil. Make sure the soil drains well and doesn’t pool water on the surface. Be sure to mix in some compost or well-rotted manure-based fertilizer before planting to condition the soil, and/or ask your garden center for a garlic-specific fertilizer. If you like it technical, garlic likes a pH of 6-7.5.

Put Your Plan into Action

Growing garlic from a clove requires placement of 6 inches of distance from the next clove and one foot from the next row. This will ensure that your garlic has room to grow naturally without interference.

An index finger plunged into the soil provides a channel to slide the clove 2 inches under it. Insert the clove with the pointed end facing upward. This pointed end is what will eventually produce the germ and eventually the stock of the head of garlic.

Before You Retreat

The finishing touches on your garlic include water and mulch. First, water in the garlic until you’re sure the soil is damp around the clove. Now, cover your garlic bed in a healthy 1-2 inch layer of mulch. This can include chopped-up branches, dried leaves, commercial mulch or storebought straw. This layer will suppress weeds, insulate the garlic during the cold of the winter, and will ensure that soil erosion due to wind and water is kept to a minimum. Keep your garlic moist throughout the growing season, but do not over-water.

Early Spring

In early spring, offer your garlic bed another blast of nutrients with some of your remaining fertilizer from planting. This will give your garlic a bump in nutrients through the growing season which will support it up until harvest.

Garlic drying
Garlic heads drying

Harvesting Your Garlic

When growing garlic from a clove, they will eventually start to look a little ‘sorry’ – that when you’ll know it’s almost time to harvest! Garlic will begin to yellow and dry as its bulb reaches full size, letting you know it’s time to dig it up. Begin by gently lifting a central head out of the soil with a garden fork and checking for size to determine whether or not to go forward with the harvest or wait another few days for some additional growth.

Lay your harvested garlic out to dry in a dry, warm environment for 2-3 weeks before cutting stalks for storage or braiding. Congratulations!! You have successfully grown garlic from a clove! Want to braid your vampire repellant into a fashionable neck piece? See how here.

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Churned Butter at Home

churned butter

When I was young, my grandfather tried to gut a jackfish in front of my sister and me. The reaction he got from us was biblical – crying, screaming, the whole thing. Before long he gave up, placed Jack back in the pail of water he’d come up in, and let us watch as he swam away unharmed. My ‘squeamishness’ that day is regularly brought up at family gatherings where everyone reinforces what a wimp I am. (It’s been 35 years, I think the horse is dead…) It has taken me until my 40th birthday to realize that I’m really not squeamish in most situations. What happened that day was a reflection of my lack of exposure to things in life that would bolster my resilience when faced with something new.

Years Later

At my house, my mother was so allergic to almost all animals that my exposure to them was essentially nil. No shit – I had to strip down in our attached garage and immediately launder everything I wore if I had stepped foot in a friend’s home. And it wasn’t just my mom that stood between me and animals, either. Once, we got an opportunity to ride some horses at a family member’s acreage, but the fun was immediately cut short because my sister’s face and eyes were swelling.

At that age, who could fault me for not being able to pet a dog comfortably – let alone gut a fish? Gradually, I began to see my lack of understanding of animals extended to the flora around me, too. I had moved to a beautiful coastal town in 2020 and the exposure to all the lush green rainforests around me called at me to do, learn, and experience more. So, I did what any sane person would do and went directly into my fears to face them head-on. I started a huge garden, learned to filet fresh salmon out of the river (H is best at this), and got a dog. I washed chicken eggs, sewed boat covers, homeschooled, and found friends who wanted to live the same way.

Now that my children are old enough to understand, I want to imbue them with as much knowledge about the nature of our earth as I can. I don’t want them to be young adults who can’t identify all the vegetables at the grocery store – you know, the ones who are 40 and still putting ranch on every damn thing?

I want my kids to understand where food comes from and how it goes back to the earth in a cycle that supports all life. I want them to understand more of the world in general. So, where should I begin? I searched my memory basket and remember making churned butter in a Mason jar as a small child (and wondering if it would ever end). It’s easy, inexpensive, and provides lots of opportunities to discuss how this important resource was made in the past. This would be perfect.

Churned Butter

  • Start by purchasing 2 cups of whipping cream. Any attempt to use a low-fat alternative here will fail!
  • Let your whipping cream come to room temperature before pouring it into your mason jar or stand mixer. (I took pity on my little guy and we used the stand mixer).
  • Start your stand mixer on low and gradually increase the speed until just before the cream splatters and makes a mess. Place a tea towel over the mixing machine to catch any splatter that does occur.
  • Continue to run your mixer this way until it forms a thick whipped cream.
  • After taking a mandatory sampling or two of your whipped cream, turn the mixer up again and keep churning the butter until it splits into what looks like butter and cloudy water (this “water” is buttermilk).
  • Pick your butter up and run cold water over it butter as you knead it into a ball
  • If you want to salt your churned butter, sprinkle some in now. If you want to add herbs and seasonings, click here for a few ideas.
  • Reserve the buttermilk to get the most out of your whipping cream!
  • Click here to see butter churning in action.

Why Churning Your Own Butter is Better

  • You control the quality of the butter by using quality ingredients
  • You get access to the freshest product (especially when you make small batches regularly)
  • Education – your child learns more about traditional foods and how they are made
  • It’s easy and fun!

Using Your Leftover Weigh

You’ve just made your first batch of home churned butter! Now you can turn your attention to that leftover weigh you set aside when it separated. Although the possibilities are endless, we love to use it in these buttermilk pancakes. For other ideas of what can be done with your leftover buttermilk, check out this list.