‘Beet’ the winter blahs

I don’t know about you, but I just love pickled beets. We use to have a rather large garden where we grew a number of fresh vegetables such as peas, carrots, beans, lettuce, radishes, spinach and beets.

When the cool spring weather arrived we would work at tilling the garden and cleaning it up for a new planting of early vegetables like peas, spinach and beets. Each year we would look for the ‘Detroit Dark Red’ beet seeds as we found these to be the best for growing, eating and pickling.

As with all the vegetables we planted, we’d nurture those beets all season, not letting them get too thirsty, making sure they had enough room between each root and digging out those over bearing weeds that like to choke all the good stuff out of your garden. We couldn’t wait until the beets were big enough to have a feed of fresh beet tops or a taste of the new beetroots we watched grow every day with enthusiasm.

When harvest time arrived in the late summer, we would dig up our beets, wash them with the garden hose and cut the tops off and discard them. (By then the tops were quite weathered and insect eaten). We’d bring the washed beets into the kitchen and spend the entire day cutting, cooking, washing jars, making sweet brine and pickling those beets. I remember how sticky everything felt in the kitchen after we were done and it would take another day to make things feel as if we had everything cleaned up again. What a lot of work!

Then we’d count how many jars we made. It never seemed like enough for all the work it took, but boy, was it worth it! Anytime we’d open a jar for ourselves or when we had company it would practically disappear during one meal. Ah, those were the days! Of course as time would have it, or I should say lack of it, we don’t have the garden anymore and we don’t grow or pickle our own beets anymore either. But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy all the benefits beets have to offer.

According to one of the world's most noted authorities, Dr. N. W. Walker, "This is one of the most valuable juices for helping to build up the red corpuscles of the blood and tone up the blood generally. It cleanses the liver probably better and faster than anything else. Beetroot produces organic iron of a quality that furnishes excellent food for the blood. The greatest virtue of the chemical elements in the beet is the fact that more than 50% is sodium and valuable for digestion, HCL (hydrochloric acid) production and to balance the stomach acids properly and for maintaining the solubility of calcium."

Paul C. Bragg, author of “The Shocking Truth About Water” suggests beets for longevity and has a recipe for Beet-Veggie soup you can practically live on. He calls red beetroot a longevity food because it produces HCL for the digestion of food.

Amongst other ailments, the Romans used beetroot as a treatment for fever and constipation. They also considered beetroot juice as an aphrodisiac. Over the millennia beetroot has been used to treat a variety of conditions, especially illnesses related to digestion and the blood. Today the beetroot is still championed as a universal cure-all.

If you’d like to enjoy all the benefits beetroot has to offer but find them time consuming to prepare or juice, or find them downright messy, then AIM RediBeets® have come to the rescue. Available in a ready-to-mix powder or convenient-to-take caplets, AIM RediBeets® saves you the trouble of juicing.

The half pound of beets used to make a teaspoon of AIM RediBeets® is residue-free. When the beets are processed to separate the juice and its valuable nutrients from the fiber, the beets are not subjected to high temperatures that may damage their nutrients. AIM RediBeets® offers a convenient way to make
juicing a part of your daily diet and help meet the NCI’s (National Cancer Institute) recommendation to eat five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables per day.

AIM uses only the root of red beets and it takes approximately 25 pounds of beets to make one pound of AIM RediBeets® powder. While there is no processed sugar in AIM RediBeets® it is made up of about 70 percent natural sugars. These natural sugars are what give AIM RediBeets® its sweet taste. Anyone who is diabetic or concerned about blood glucose levels should consult a health practitioner before using AIM RediBeets®.

If you’d like to learn more about AIM RediBeets® and all the benefits it has to offer please visit My AIM Store website at http://awealthofhealth.myaimstore.com

Here’s a recipe I found on the Internet for Beet Soup (it may be the same or similar to the Paul Bragg recipe I mentioned earlier). It looks healthy and easy to make. What a great way to ‘Beet’ the winter blahs! Enjoy!

Beet Soup:

Raw beets and celery have the highest amounts of organic sodium. Here's a Borscht type of beet soup:

1 small onion, minced
2 cups shredded green cabbage
3 cups shredded raw beets
3 fresh tomatoes (or 1 cup canned unsalted tomatoes)
1 cup shredded carrots
1 teaspoon lemon juice or natural cider vinegar
1 cup diced celery
½ teaspoon kelp seasoning
2 potatoes, diced, skin and all
2 tablespoons unsaturated oil such as soy, corn, olive, safflower
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ cup sour cream, optional

Mince onion and sauté in oil until yellow, about 3 minutes. Add 1 ½ quarts of steam-produced distilled water with vegetables. Simmer about 15 to 20 minutes until vegetables are tender. Season with lemon juice, or pure natural apple cider vinegar. Optional: serve garnished with sour cream.