Susan Yaruta-Young generously shared her own family’s recipe for pickled beets along with a bit of precious history:

A cup of thinly cut beets, in a wee bit of salt, add thinly cut onions (sweet onions are best – cut the way you might like them on a sandwich)

Let them sit a few hours in a bit of a combination of white vinegar and a 1/2 teaspoon of sugar.

Cook until you can easily pierce the beets with a fork — about 12-15 minutes.

Let sit at least overnight in the juices.

Serve hot or cold.

My Grandmother Yaruta was German-Irish and cooked in a farm wife, seasonal way, so many berries, fruit and veggies were either taken fresh from the fields, woods and gardens or what had been kept in the cold cellar: squash, potatoes, carrots, cabbages, onions, peppers, garlic or were things she canned in Ball jars. Later, my mom froze many of the fresh foods as they were harvested.

Any meats (or fish) were from the farm or from hunters/fishering folk in the family. My grandfather raised chickens, geese, and squabs and we always had plenty of eggs. Milk was delivered by a milkman and the quart bottles were washed and returned — so no plastic or cardboard trash there.

We ate, for the most part, seasonally, and we ate very few pre-processed foods.

Thanks for sharing, Susan!

Here are the statistics for Thursday

’til next time,
Brenda