What's Cooking?

Source: countrymommacooks.com via Pary on Pinterest

Beets are what's cooking.

I had pinned beet jelly on Pinterest because I knew that we were due for some beets from the CSA. 

Isn't it a stunning color?  I did things slightly differently but kept the spirit of the beet jelly spirit alive.

I'll fill you in on a little secret, we don't actually like beets here at the Little Pink House.  But when you are part of a CSA so you get local seasonal organic vegetables, you take what you are given - and we were given beets.

We broke the beets down into three usable parts:  greens, bulbs, juice.

Here's what we did:

Tossed the greens with a warm vinaigrette.

Boiled the bulbs (is that the right terminology?) and gave them to my parents who do like beets.

Used the boiling liquid to make Cranberry Beet Sauce using the original Beet Jelly recipe as a base and adding whole cranberries to the mix.

I am going to be brutally honest here:  you may have noticed that I said sauce and not jelly.  That's because I attempted too many alterations at once like adding the cranberries and tripling the recipe and using something other than a box of sure-jell for the pectin. 

The stuff never set even after reboiling it and canning it again.  But, the saving grace is that tasted really good so I have used it as a dipping sauce for Croque Monsieur and as a pour over sauce for a breakfast casserole. 

But what am I going to do with the other 5 pints?  ;)

This is part of Full Plate Thursday.