Your delinquent scribe is sitting here eating a bowlful of the most amazing beet soup I’ve ever made, thank you very much.  I chopped and sauteed an onion and a half, added three huge chopped cloves of garlic (that’s Ontario garlic to you), some Italian spices, salt, pepper and four large Ontario beets, sweet as can be and chopped into half-inch cubes.  I sauteed the beets without pre-boiling or roasting them so it took a little while but at least the nutrients remained in the pot and not in the air.  I added some boiled broccoli-water and a half-cup of pre-boiled green lentils.  I also used the immersion blender because as you know I can’t seem to manage pureeing my soup in the regular blender without my kitchen looking like a crime scene.  I didn’t feel like doing a beet-red makeover today, and besides, blood-red walls are so … Nineties!

And what a tool.  The immersion blender, that is.  I’m sure it was the tidiest soup-blending of 2012, even if I do say so myself.

What is remarkable about this soup, and not just it’s sweet rich flavour, is its vivid colour.  It’s so red it looks like blood.  It isn’t because, as you know, I gave up eating blood in 1987.  My borscht is usually purple because the beets are roasted which darkens them, but these beets, being local and super-fresh, are super-red too.  The beet greens I chopped and stirred in at the end added a little bit of texture and an earthy, but not bitter, accent that nicely complimented the sweetness.

My photos don’t do the vividness justice, nor does my limited vocabulary convey the heavenly taste: rich, creamy, sweet and very filling.

Here’s what you get from beets.  So eat a lot and eat ’em often:

• Vitamin A
• Vitamin B6
• Vitamin C
• Vitamin K
• Beta-carotene
• Calcium
• Folate
• Iron
• Magnesium
• Manganese
• Potassium
• Riboflavin
• Thiamin*

*Thanks to http://vitamins.lovetoknow.com