My photo
Ontario, Canada
I am a wife, mother and grandma who enjoys the many aspects of homemaking. A variety of interests and hobbies combined with travel keep me active. They reflect the importance of family, friends, home and good food.
Cook ingredients that you are used to cooking by other techniques, such as fish, chicken, or hamburgers. In other words be comfortable with the ingredients you are using.
--Bobby Flay

For Your Information

Please watch this area for important information like updates, food recalls, polls, contests, coupons, and freebies.
  • [March 19, 2020] - Effective Mar 17, this blog will no longer accept advertising. The reason is very simple. If I like a product, I will promote it without compensation. If I don't like a product, I will have no problem saying so.
  • [March 17, 2020] - A return to blogging! Stay tuned for new tips, resources and all things food related.
  • [February 1, 2016] - An interesting report on why you should always choose organic tea verses non-organic: Toxic Tea (pdf format)
  • Sticky Post - Warning: 4ever Recap reusable canning lids. The reports are growing daily of these lids losing their seal during storage. Some have lost their entire season's worth of canning to these seal failures! [Update: 4ever Recap appears to be out of business.]

Popular Posts

Wednesday, December 05, 2012

Roasted Beets

I recently posted about a few great deals I got on Ontario produce only a day after returning home from our fall vacation.  No Frills had 10 lb bags of beets, onions, potatoes and carrots on sale for $1.88 each.  When I come across a deal like this, there is no way I am not going to take advantage of it.  I do a lot of home food preservation so it would take me very little time to home can or freeze 40 lb of produce but I have a bit of a system.  I tend to preserve 25% to 50% of this type of deal and use the rest fresh for very inexpensive, frugal meals.  This is a very frugal method for keeping your pantry and freezers well stocked while using fresh produce.

roasted beets
This meal seriously was about as cheap as you can get with the most expensive item being chicken breast baked in homemade shake and bake coating mix.  I baked a couple of potatoes, roasted a couple of beets and steamed carrots all from my frugal Ontario produce purchases.  That isn't sour cream on the potato either, it is homemade yogurt which is lower in fat and calories than sour cream.  It is butter on the steamed carrots.

Roasted beets have a deep rich flavour.  It rather surprising that you don't often see beets served at restaurants given their delicious flavour element combined with very low price.  In fact, even on the food channel, I seldom see them cooking beets.  Anyway, roasting beets is simple.  Scrub the beets well and trim only the top leaving about 2 - inches.  This prevents the beet from bleeding.  Place the whole beets in a baking dish and bake uncovered at 350°F until the beets are tender, about 45 minutes.  Remove from baking dish and let sit 5 minutes.  Trim both ends and slip the skins.  The roasted beets can be halved or sliced for serving.

This was a very simple, frugal meal yet rich in antioxidants, beta carotene and fairly high in tryptophan.  It was low fat as well even though I did add butter to my steamed carrots.  It was very low sodium.  The most important thing though, it was a delicious meal that took almost no effort.  It was low prep, toss in the oven except the carrots that went into the steamer basket.  Not bad if I don't say so myself !


0 food lovers commented: