Beets

Beetroot can be stored loose in your fridge's veggie drawer for at least two to three weeks, or longer. The greens are far more delicate and should be cooked within two or three days of purchase; cut greens from the roots and store in a damp towel or unsealed bag in the fridge.

Beetroot can be eaten raw, roasted, boiled, steamed, sautéed and even made into chips. They are excellent paired with salty or creamy cheese (like feta, goat, ricotta), nuts and citrus. They are wonderful roasted whole, which concentrates the sweet and earthy flavors. After letting roasted beets cool slightly, rub the skins off with a paper towel - the skins will come right off with very minimal effort. The leaves are excellent raw, boiled, steamed and sautéed. Add them to any recipe calling for spinach or chard. The stems can be cooked the same way you'd cook chard stems or bok choy.

Pickling beets is a great way to preserve them, and making them from scratch outshines the canned variety. They can also be lacto-fermented; beet kvass is a healthy drink made from lactofermented beets. Beets can also be canned and frozen.

Beetroot is high in fiber, folate and manganese, and is a decent source of Vitamin C, potassium and magnesium. The greens are nutritionally almost identical to chard, high in fiber, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin K, riboflavin, calcium, iron, magnesium, copper, manganese. The pigments responsible for both red and yellow varieties, betalains, are antioxidants and may also be cancer-preventatives.

The Chioggia (frequently called 'candy cane' in the U.S.), beautifully striped hot pink and white, is named after Chioggia, a fishing town in the province of Venice.

A little over half of the sugar produced in the U.S. comes from sugarbeets, which are bred for their high sugar content. However, sugarbeets are not directly consumed by people and need to be processed to produce white sugar.

As a root vegetable with a thick peel, table beets tend to contain very little pesticide residue. These are grown on a small scale nationwide, and they're often worked into more complex crop rotations to manage pests without too many chemicals. The peak season is generally mid-summer through late fall, but they can be cold stored or heavily mulched and are readily available through the winter.