Food Choices that improve cholesterol and blood sugar.

A review of studies on how what we eat affects our bodies right after a meal says that, when you eat too much fat or highly-processed carbohydrates in one meal, your blood sugar and triglycerides go up quickly. Your body can't metabolize this excess very well, and you wind up with free radicals, oxidative stress, inflammation, and a stress response. You will have immediate increases in blood pressure, oxidation of LDL cholesterol, C-reactive protein production, and risk of blood clotting. This can go on for longer than four hours after a meal, at which time you'll be nearly ready for another meal....

Post-prandial "glucose excursions" are associated with risk of cardiovascular disease (atherosclerosis or hardening or narrowing of the arteries), which can lead to a heart attack, a stroke, or cognitive decline (where you have more and more trouble with memory and alertness, and become confused more often) -- all because of poor circulation to your heart and brain. On top of that, those spikes in blood sugar and insulin will lead to excess fat deep in your belly (called visceral fat), which increases your risk of diabetes and high blood pressure.

The good news is that most people can slow down the rate at which these bad things happen, or even stop them, just by making a few changes in how they eat. You can probably reduce your risk of heart disease or even lose belly fat.

Eat Better Carbs
Cut down on white bread, white rice, and white potatoes. Substitute pasta, whole unmilled grains (like brown rice and bulgar), and even pasta. Avoid highly-processed foods that have a lot of sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, white flour, and processed starch. Then substitute more vegetables like broccoli and spinach for some of the grains and potatoes. Eat "good carb" fruits like citrus, cherries, and berries.

I tried this one out last Friday. I made a pasta salad, but added quite a lot of chopped vegetables. Little bits of leftover grilled asparagus, red peppers, broccoli, onion, some fresh herbs from the garden, a little carrot and celery, a few peas, and some small red beans. It was colorful and delicious, and there was less room in the bowl for pasta.

Eat better fats
Avoid trans fats and saturated fats. Use modest amounts of olive oil or nut oils, and get some fish oils for their omega-3 fatty acids. The omega-3 fatty acids improve the after-meal triglycerides and reduce inflammation and risk of heart disease.

I'm working on adding one meal of fish per week to my family's menu, and maybe working up to two meals a week. Tuna sandwiches and tuna in the pasta salad go over pretty well.

Eat foods that slow digestion
Like nuts, vinegar, and cinnamon, and high-fiber foods like lettuce, spinach, and broccoli. A nice big serving of green salad dressed with vinegar and a little olive oil can lower your after-meal blood sugar by 25% or more and help you to feel more full. And a very small serving of nuts gives you antioxidants and decreases after-meal oxidative damage.

So I've tried having a small handful of plain, unsalted almonds as an evening snack, as a substitute for a small snack of pretzels. I pack low-sugar fruit cups in the kids' lunches instead of pudding cups, and include a bundle of carrot sticks. I try to serve a green salad or (when I can get them) a fresh beet salad dressed in vinegar. I've also found the kids are less likely to make faces at cooked greens if I serve them with vinegar.

Eat a little lean protein
At each meal to keep your metabolism up. This includes egg whites, fish, game meat (and other very lean red meats), skinless poultry breast, and nonfat dairy protein. They can decrease after-meal inflammation and help with losing weight.

Does nonfat milk on the quick oats at breakfast count?

Eat modest-sized servings
So your body can handle the load. Foods that help you feel full will help. They authors recommend vinegar and high-fiber foods.

We actually bring measuring cups to the table to help with this.

Move
Get 30 minutes or more per day of moderate or stronger physical activity. Even light exercise, if you keep up with it daily, can help. 90 minutes of exercise within 2 hours before or after a meal can cut your after-meal blood sugar and triglycerides in half.

Here's where I could really help myself some more, although the rest of my family doesn't seem to have a lot of problem. I think I'm spending too much time looking for health information and writing about it, and need to spend more time weeding the garden.

Keep a Healthy Weight
Strive for a waist size less than half your height.

Foods that reduce inflammation include fish oil and other omega-3 fatty acid supplements (since they reduce blood triglycerides), deeply-colored fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts, and cinnamon.

I think I've been doing a pretty good job in the last couple of years improving my family's diet. In the next few months, I'm going to put some focus on continuing to improve our carbohydrates, since there's a big benefit there. And I'll continue exploring the anti-oxidants. I really like the idea of improving my health with cocoa and cinnamon.

• J Am Coll Cardiol. 2008 Jan 22;51(3):249-55. Dietary strategies for improving post-prandial glucose, lipids, inflammation, and cardiovascular health. O'Keefe JH, Gheewala NM, O'Keefe JO. Summary or full article available from medscape.
• Endocr Pract. 2008 Jan-Feb;14(1):112-24. Postprandial dysmetabolism: the missing link between diabetes and cardiovascular events?. Bell DS, O'Keefe JH, Jellinger P.

Last edited (corrected typos) 29 Oct 2008

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Food Safety: When do you wash your produce?

There's an interesting discussion going on at the Fanatic Cook blog. It began with Honduran cantaloupes that are associated with a Salmonella outbreak in the US.

Of course, produce grows outdoors in the dirt. Animals poop outdoors in the dirt. Contamination from passing birds, livestock, or vermin is always a possiblity. When I buy a melon directly from the farmer, it is dirty. Before I slice it, I give that melon a good rinse and scrub-down in the sink. Afterwards, I give the sink a soapy scrub-down to clean it. This keeps the dirt, and the germs in the dirt, off the counter, cutting board, and knife, and out of the food.

But when I buy a melon at the supermarket, it looks as clean as if I had just washed it myself. So I don't wash it. I rarely wash apples, oranges, or tomatoes. I have never washed a banana. Have you? Even though you know that, every time you grab a piece of produce, you could get invisible germs on your hands and spread them all over the kitchen? Why aren't you and your family sick every single day? Is this like playing Russian Roulette with vegetables?

Well, maybe. Most tragedies happen after a whole string of things has gone wrong. And there are many opportunities between the field and the plate to prevent a food-borne illness.

Most soil germs are not dangerous. But fertilizer/manure or irrigation water could be contaminated and spread germs in the field. The dirty-looking recirculated wash water they use in packing plants could be OK if they treat it properly, or it could be putting germs right back on the potatoes. Workers could be protecting the food, or contaminating it if they don't wash their hands. And you never know who has handled the produce in the grocery store.

Knowing all that, I'm responsible for the food I choose and how I handle it. I follow a few simple rules.

• Vegetable washes haven't proven to be any more effective than plain, clean water at removing bacteria, so I stick with plain water, and scrub, rub, agitate, or spray.
• Keep the sink and the scrubbers clean.
• There is no way to remove 100% of the germs on foods. So try not to let the germs grow. Eat, cook, or refrigerate things soon after you cut them.
• If those watermelon slices start to look "different", it's time to toss them. Avoid damaged produce. Don't eat rotten stuff.
• This summer, I'm sure I'll still be eating unwashed vegetables straight off the vine.
• I'm not going to start washing bananas.
• I'll think again about prewashed mini-carrots, but I'll probably keep trusting the Jolly Green Giant, the distribution network, and my local grocery store.
  

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FIT vegetable wash powder (Citric acid, sodium lauryl sulfate, sodium carbonate & magnesium carbonate, Grapefruit Oil extract) was developed by Proctor and Gamble, which then sold the license to Healthpro Brands. It is distributed to growers, packers, and shippers by Caruso Foods

According to the Cornell Department of Agriculture, no-one knows how much food-borne illness originates on the farm.

Bleaching produce is only recommeded in extreme situations, such as flooding. Leafy vegetables, fleshy vegetables (tomatoes, summer squash, peppers) and berries cannot be adequately disinfected. Other contaminated vegetables can be cleaned in fresh water and then soaked in a very weak chlorine solution for 15 to 20 minutes.

Did you hear A&P sued a couple of its former stock clerks for making a video in which they licked produce and put it back on the shelves?

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Greens -- an introduction

Fresh Greens

I was just reading 5 Super Ingredients by Melanie at dietriffic. She just discovered an Asian green called Choy Sum, and gave a stir-fry recipe. She says she means to add more greens to her diet. It's a good idea. People have been eating greens for a long time, but where meat and carbohydrates are cheap, people seem to start leaving greens off their plate, which is a shame. Greens are the green leaves of non-heading herbaceous plants, eaten as vegetables. They are generally rich in vitamins A, B (including folate), C, E, and K, as well as antioxidants and have varying amounts of the minerals magnesium, calcium, potassium, and iron. Heading cabbages (red and green), iceberg lettuce, and Belgian endive are pale by comparison and so are not treated as greens. They don't develop nearly as many nutrients.

Serving Size
Fresh raw greens, torn or sliced, are fluffy, but will compact when you cook it. To get a half-cup serving of spinach, you'll need to eat a full cup of raw spinach salad, or a quarter cup of well-cooked spinach. Collards, kale, and other, more sturdy greens, won't compact quite as much as spinach will.

Preparing Greens
Very young greens are tender and can be eaten with their ribs, veins, and stems. Sturdier and more mature greens may have tough or bitter stems and veins, which need to be torn or stripped out. Large Romaine lettuce can be torn away from the thickest, whitest portion of its stem. With sturdy collards, grab the stem with one hand, wrap your other hand around the leaf, and strip it right off the vein.

Greens grow close to the ground, so they can be sandy or muddy. If you've got just 4-5 leaves of Romaine for your salad, you can give them a quick "shower" under running water. If you've got a couple pounds of greens, give them a bath in a large bowl or your well-cleaned sink. Agitate the leaves, let the dirt settle, scoop out the leaves, rinse the sink, and do it again. Check the bottom of the sink for dirt and sand. If you got it all, you are done.

To quickly chop a big pile of greens, stack a few up, roll them around their central veins, and slice them into ribbons with a chef's knife. You can turn the mass of ribbons sideways if you like and slice them into rough rectangles.

Most types of greens don't need to cook long -- five minutes or less for very tender young greens, 10 minutes for most sturdy large-leafed greens, 20 minutes for really tough, mature leaves, and longer for certain greens that contain a lot of oxalic acid.

Photo Source: USDA

Lettuce is a members of the daisy family. Many Western varieties have been bred for mild flavor to be used in fresh salads, while many more bitter Asian varieties have been bred for use in cooking. They all belong to the same species. People have been eating lettuces for over 4000 years. The darker green loose-leaf lettuces have lots of vitamins and minerals and a mild flavor. A popular way to serve lettuce in the US is in a green salad.
Endives, Radicchio and Escarole are all related to chicory, another member of the daisy family. Most are more bitter than lettuces. While Radicchio and curly endive are used in fresh salads, escarole is usually served served as a cooked green or as a soup.

Photo Source: USDA

Spinach, Chard (Silverbeet), Beet Greens. Chard and Beets are different varieties of beet, while spinach is a close relative. These greens have a mild flavor. Young leaves are used fresh in salads while older leaves are cooked.
Amaranth Greens are related to spinach and chard, and are usually eaten cooked.
Spinach and Amaranth leaves contain a fair amount of oxalic acid, which can cause problems for people susceptible to gout or kidney stones

Photo Source: Whole Foods

Kole greens like collards, kale, turnip and mustard greens, rapini, Chinese mustard, choy sum, bok choy and kai lan are all the same species as turnips, and are closely related to cabbage and broccoli. Most of these are served cooked, although young mustard greens are can be eaten raw in salads.
Arugula or Rocket is in the same family as cabbages, has a peppery taste, and is often used like lettuce



Taro, Kalo, Dasheen, malanga, cocoyam -- varieties of colocasia and xanthosoma have been grown around the world for thousands of years. The greens contain needles of oxalic acid, and must be cooked for a long time before they can be eaten. These greens are popular in the Caribbean and Polynesia

Weeds or uncultivated greens Other greens, such as dandelion, lamb's quarters, miner's lettuce, and purslane, are collected wild and are not as likely to show up in the supermarket. Some of these greens contain even more vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants than supermarket variety greens.

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Caribbean Flavor: A Big Pot of Greens

A variety of greens are popular in the Caribbean, some of which actually require long cooking. But many greens can be cooked in 10 minutes.

While the Southern US pot of greens is often finished with vinegar, this version uses fresh lime juice and a little allspice for a bright, tropical flavor. Use chard (which is like a sturdier spinach leaf) or cruciferous greens such as kale (the sweetest), mustard or turnip (both of which have a mustardy snap that dissipates during cooking), or collard (which can be slightly bitter) for a hearty dish. Don't throw away the cooking liquid. That "pot liquor" is tasty and delicious.

This is my own interpretation of two tasty-sounding recipes -- Carribean style Greens and Island Collards. If you can't take the heat, leave out the jalapeño.

Caribbean-Inspired Greens

Recipe By: Family Nutritionist

-= Ingredients =-
2 lb Collard Greens ; (or kale, mustard, or turnip)
1/8 pound Bacon ; or other smoked meat
1 cup Onion ; finely chopped
1 small Jalapeno peppers ; (red) stemmed, seeded, and finely chopped
1/8 teaspoon Allspice
1 tablespoon Water
1 dash Black pepper ; freshly ground
2 teaspoon Lime juice ; or lemon juice

-= Instructions =-
Wash the greens well in several changes of water. Remove the thick rib from the center of the leaves; chop coarsely.

Chop the bacon into small bits, add to a large pot, and cook 5 minutes. Pour off any excess fat. Sauté onion, pepper, and allspice until softened -- do not brown.

Add the damp greens to the pot. Cover and cook until wilted, about 10 minutes. Add a little additional water, if necessary. Stir often. Drain, if necessary.

Stir in the lime juice and serve.

Serving Size: 0.5 cups; (151g) Calories: 82: Fat(g): 4 (49%of Cals): Sodium (g): 75
Protein: 4g, NetCarbs: 5, K: 239mg
SatFat: 2g, PolyFat: 1g, MonoFat: 2g, Chol: 5mg
TotCarbs: 9g, Fiber: 4g, Sugars: 1g

Food Group Serving(s)
DASH: Vegetables: 1.0: Fruits/Juices: 0.0: Dairy: 0.0: Grains: 0.0: Meat/Fish: 0.0: Seeds: 0.0: Fats: 0.9: Sweets: 0.0
USDA: Vegetables: 0.5: Fruits/Juices: 0.0: Dairy: 0.0: Grains: 0.0: Meat/Fish/Seeds: 0.0: Fats: 0.9: Sweets: 0.0

Nutritional information in this post calculated using bigoven. Food Group Servings calculated in EXCEL using http://www.mypyramid.gov/ and DASH diet references

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Healthier Choices, step 2: eat lunch

Here's a classic busy-day-at-work story. Skip Lunch. Low energy in the afternoon. Famished by dinner time. No time to make lunch in the morning? Start taking mini carrots and string cheese to work. Ten mini carrots and one string cheese is a half-cup of vegetables and a serving of dairy. It's easy to choose your portion size.
It's only a snack, hardly a whole meal, but it is a step in the right direction.

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Healthier Choices, step 1: more vegetables

B was a meat and potatoes eater. One day, B said "I'm eating a lot more vegetables now". And, at my house, I noticed B WAS eating more vegetables, and trying new ones, too. Beets, broccoli, beans. All in all, a better-balanced diet -- a better balance of nutrients. B is thinking about a balanced diet, not weight loss, but replacing some helpings of meat and potatoes with lower-carbohydrate vegetables means fewer calories, too.

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Green and Orange Ribbons with Fettucini

I really love mustard greens. The young greens are sharp and snappy in salads. Cooked lightly, they retain their bright green color and snappy, mustardy, zing. They are sometimes very sandy, and may need to be rinsed twice in a couple inches of water in the sink. They can be roughly stacked up and sliced into ribbons with a chef's knife

Here's a favorite dish I haven't made in a while -- Green and Orange Ribbons with Fettucini. It's based on a recipe I found in a beautiful cookbook ("Healthy Vegetarian Cooking", published by Barnes and Noble). Strangely, the main ingredient was omitted. And the fat and sodium levels were too high for me. So I made a few changes.

This recipe, with garlic and mustard greens, has a lot of zing. It also has one cup of vegetables and two one-ounce servings of grain per serving. Decrease the sesame oil if you wish to reduce fat even further. A vegetable peeler, mandoline, or the "slicer" side of a vegetable grater can create carrot ribbons quickly. Once everything is sliced, it all cooks quickly, so this dish can hurry up and wait until the "main course" is ready.

-= Exported from BigOven =-

Green and Orange Ribbons with Fettucini

Recipe By: Family Nutritionist
Serving Size: 4
Cuisine: Asian
Main Ingredient:
Categories: Vegetarian, Saute, LOW SODIUM, DASH, Vegetables

-= Ingredients =-
8 ounce Fettucini
1/2 tablespoon Olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoon Sesame oil
3 cloves Garlic ; crushed
2 Carrots ; peeled and cut into ribbons
4 cup Mustard greens ; cut into ribbons
1 tablespoons Low-sodium soy sauce
2 tablespoons Sesame seeds

-= Instructions =-
Prepare fettucini according to package directions.
Toast sesame seeds in dry skillet as you heat it. Remove sesame seeds, add olive oil and garlic -- heat until you smell the garlic. Add carrot ribbons and sesame oil; saute until carrots are tender. Five minutes before serving, add mustard green ribbons and soy sauce. Cover tightly and steam over very low heat.
Toss vegetables to mix, sprinkle with sesame seeds, and serve over fettucini.

Nutritional Summary
Servings: 4: Serving Size: (203g): Calories: 363: Fat(g): 11: Sodium (g): 175

Food Group Serving(s)
DASH: Vegetables: 2.0: Fruits/Juices: 0.0: Dairy: 0.0: Grains: 2.0: Meat/Fish: 0.0: Seeds: 0.1: Fats: 1.5: Sweets: 0.0
USDA: Vegetables: 1.0: Fruits/Juices: 0.0: Dairy: 0.0: Grains: 2.0: Meat/Fish/Seeds: 0.1: Fats: 1.5: Sweets: 0.0
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Eat More Fruits and Vegetables

The Produce for Better Health Foundation has begun a new campaign, "fruits and veggies -- more matters" to promote produce consumption. Apparantly the "5 A Day THE COLOR WAY" message (also developed by the Produce for Better Health Foundation) was too complicated or too intimidating (what with all those capital letters and whatnot). Maybe the PBH feels the emphasis on more, rather than on 5 servings of produce daily causes less guilt or oppositional feelings, and will result in increased produce purchases.

Of course, "5" is the magic number only for those getting about 2,200 Calories per day. Most of us need less. It is pretty simple to find out what you need. The next step is just figuring out when to eat all that produce. Don't wait for dinner -- it will just be too much food. And the TOO MUCH FOOD diet gets old as quickly as any other fad diet.

Here's how my favorite 8-year-old typically gets 3 1/2 cups of fruit and vegetables in a day:

• A banana at mid-morning snack
• Half a cup of applesauce and 10 mini-carrots with lunch
• Half a cup of broccoli, half a cup of spaghetti sauce, and one cup of salad at dinner.

I should get 4.5 cups a day, so I can add to this:

• 1/4 cup of raisins or 1/2 cup orange juice at breakfast, or half an orange after dinner
• Increase broccoli to 1 cup, spaghetti sauce to 3/4 cup, salad to 1 1/2 cups.

This is all pretty easy to remember (even with little details like dried fruit counting twice as much and fluffy salad greens counting half as much), and even the 4-year-old is getting pretty good at food choices. Do we need more?

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Of pyramids and potatoes

For the past few years, I have been following the recommendations of the DASH diet developers, which are similar to the USDA recommendations. But I am always interested in other food pyramids. A British dietician, Melanie Thomassian, in her Dietriffic blog, presented the British food pyramid, which turns out to be more of a pie. Considering the popularity of savory pies in the UK, this seems appropriate. The UKFSA food pie groups fruits and vegetables together. The USDA and DASH food pyramids separate them, because they have different nutrient profiles. The UKFSA pie groups the potato with grains, presumably because they are similarly starchy. The USDA groups the potato with vegetables because, well, it is a vegetable, and (starchiness aside) is nutritionally most similar to other vegetables.

By putting the potato with grains, the UK food pie recognizes the potato's role as a staple food. The last time I visited (several years ago now), the potato was a part of "meat and three veg", a standard choice for the evening meal, highly desirable in a breakfast "fry-up", and often eaten at noon. In vast territories of the US, however, the potato fell out of favor during the low-carb craze. Grains are coming back into fashion, but the potato, excellent source of calcium though it is, is presented by the USDA as one of a "vary your veggies" menu. And, because it is not featured in the "eat more dark greens, orange, and dry beans and peas" advice, it is now pretty low in the vegetable rotation. Somewhere down there with kohlrabi and tomatoes, I suppose. But I suspect the potato is more popular than the USDA is letting on. Many restaurants still offer a choice of "potato, pasta, or rice" with the main course. McDonald's still sells a lot of fries. And Waffle House still offers hundreds of variations on the hash brown.

When I was growing up, there were only four food groups in the US. A potato was equivalent to a grain. These days, though, I am much more likely to have a grain (pasta, rice, biscuits, or bread) than a potato with the evening meal. Occasionally, I'll serve a grain AND a potato. It feels a little strange to me, but I do it any way. The DASH diet advises choosing tomatoes and dark green leafy vegetables for half of the weekly vegetable servings, and choosing a variety for the other half. I could still work a potato in there fairly often. Especially if it is a cold potato, which has "better carbs".

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Fresh Beets, Simply

Apparently, Beyoncé hates beets.[1] And so do a lot of other people. I suspect this is because they have been eating canned beets. Canned beets are pale and watery next to the real thing. Real beets are so much redder, sweeter, and more flavorful. And they are a hot new vegetable, being made popular in the US by four-star chefs at tony restaurants in DC and Manhattan. Who knew? At the supermarket, I never see them in anybody's basket but my own.

Why don't I see more people buying fresh beets? Do they not know what to do with them? Are they afraid they are too hard to prepare? Do they think they hate beets? I learned my mother-in-law thought she was not fond of beets when I served her a simple beet dish I learned from Julia Child ("Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home"). She had grown up on watery canned beets, and could only tolerate them prepared Harvard style -- plenty of sugar, vinegar, and cloves to make up for the missing flavors. She was amazed to find out how great beets can taste.

Most recipes begin by roasting the beets in a 350°F oven for an hour. And that is certainly delicious. The dry heat concentrates the flavor and the sweetness, and adds a little caramelization. But I don't always have the time, and, with the weather getting warmer, I don't always want to heat up my kitchen. So I follow Julia Child's advice -- I use the pressure cooker. A pressure cooker is a wonderful saucepot that speeds up cooking bean soups or whole hominy, but I use it much more these days for beets. Now that my grocery carries them all the time, I buy them practically every week. At 99 cents a pound, they are unbelievably cheap for something so delicious, so nutritious, and so beautiful. Pink fingertips seem a small price to pay.[2]

You will need a serving bowl, a dishwasher-safe cutting board, your favorite knife, and a pressure cooker. Bring home some fresh beets -- I like the 3 to 5 inch beets best because their skins slip off so easily after they cook. You'll need half an hour to cook the beets, 10 minutes to cool them, and another 5-10 minutes to prepare them for the table. You could start a day ahead of time, and refrigerate the beets as soon as you can get the cooker open.

Give the beets a quick rub-down in the sink. Cut off the greens just above the root. Save them to cook like chard. Snap off the tails. Don't cut into the beets -- they bleed. Add about an inch of water and a vegetable steamer to the bottom of the pressure cooker. Put the beets in, close up the pressure cooker, put the regulator on, and heat it up until the regulator starts regulating. Adjust the heat to keep the regulator happily spitting and hissing, cook for 30 minutes, then take the pot off the heat to cool down until the safety lock withdraws.

While the beets are cooking and cooling, prepare the rest of your meal. When practically everything else is ready for the table and the pressure cooker has cooled, open it and set up next to the sink. Get 3 or 4 beets out of the pot a time. They should be a little bit squishy. Slice off the tops, where the stems were attached. Trim out any hard spots and the edges of fissures. Using your fingertips, slip the skin right off into the bottom of the sink. It won't come off in one piece, but it should come off quickly. Underneath, the beet will look smoother and shinier than the dull skin. Slice the beets and tip them into the serving bowl.

I like a simple dressing, one that brings out the beet's natural sweetness and flavor. I have tried:

1. garlic and kosher salt crushed in olive oil (Julia Child's recipe)


2. olive oil and orange juice


3. olive oil, balsamic vinegar, allspice, and vanilla, and a tiny pinch of salt

The third is my current favorite. Vanilla and allspice, balanced by the vinegar acidity bring out the sweetness without hiding the beet flavor. A very light coating of olive oil pulls it all together and enhances the mouth feel. This is as kid-friendly as Harvard Beets, but without the sugary syrup.

Once you master the beet basics, try something more sophisticated. Try roast beet, jicama, and carrot salad, or drizzle sliced beets with a blue cheese sauce.[3] On a typical weeknight, though, I stick with my standby. The kids eat it up, courtesy of Julia Child. Make plenty of extra, so your spouse can make Harvard Beets -- a fond childhood memory.

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[1] Scholastic Star Spotlight -- Beyoncé
[2] Well, pink fingertips and beeturia, a phenomenon you may never have observed if you have not eaten fresh beets. Do not be alarmed. It is merely the red beet color tinting your bodily fluids. I never see this when I eat canned beets, but I always see it when I eat fresh beets.
[3] NPR: The Beet Goes On

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