Generous Neighbours, Free Vegetables, Allotment Goodies

One of our neighbours recently gave Mr.R a jar of pickled beetroot.
He said his friend had grown the beetroot himself, and we love beetroot so we were very pleased.

Then a few days later I saw the same neighbour and he handed me a bag of lovely ripe tomatoes, again these were grown locally on an allotment.
And then another neighbour called us over, and asked us if we like tomatoes, we said yes, and she handed us a bag full of lovely sweet tomatoes.

And just a few days ago the neighbour who gave us the beetroot etc., offered us some more fresh homegrown food, this time he handed us a bag containing some lovely big carrots, three large onions, and a huge leek.
As you can see from the photo, the leek was so large that our neighbour cut it in half to share with us.

It's so lovely having such generous neighbours.
And really lovely eating lots of fresh healthy vegetables.
We absolutely love vegetables, I mean we're not vegetarians, but we eat lots and lots of veg.
Do you like vegetables?
Do you grow your own veg?

Homemade Pickled Beetroot

A while ago one of our neighbours gave us lots of lovely home-grown beetroot.

I put off doing anything with the beetroot for a few days, because, well, because I'm a procrastinator.
And I couldn't decide exactly what I wanted to do with it.
I thought about roasting it, making beetroot soup, eating it raw, or pickling it, but I couldn't force myself into the kitchen to actually do anything with it. It's not my room - Mr.R does all of our cooking. Thankfully!
I can cook, I just don't particularly enjoy cooking - not that making beetroot edible is cooking...........

Anyway, one afternoon when Mr.R had pooped out I suddenly felt the urge to finally do something with the carrier bag full of beetroot. I decided to pickle it.

I've never pickled anything before, well, not by myself. Although I do have lovely memories from my childhood of helping my mum pickle various foods.

A quick Google search and I'd found a recipe for pickled beetroot that I liked the sound of.
Although as I've said before, on the rare occasions when I do cook, that I don't like following recipes, so I usually find one I like, and then ignore it, and make it up as I go along. Hehe!

Right, so here's what I did to pickle the home-grown beetroot our neighbour had given us.
I started by washing, and then boiling the fresh beetroot, until it was tender.
Once the beetroot was cooked, I left it to cool down, before I peeled it; rubbed the skins off.

Whilst the beetroot was cooking I washed several jars, and sterilised them by heating/drying them in the oven.

I boiled the jar lids to sterilise them, and left them to dry.

Then I made the pickling vinegar.
Being limited by what's available in the local shops, I had to use basic white distilled malt vinegar as the pickling base.

I then added a few other ingredients from the cupboard to the vinegar, including -

• Himalayan Pink Salt
• Black Peppercorns 
• Juniper Berries
• Coriander Seeds
• Fresh Chili
• Sugar - small amount added by taste
• Cinnamon
• Turmeric

The pickling vinegar only took a few minutes to heat, stirring gently to help mix the ingredients.
It smelt really good.

By the time I'd added the vinegar and the other pickling ingredients to the saucepan, the beetroot was cold and ready to be peeled.
I gently rubbed the beetroot skins, which came off easily.

Now it was time to chop the cooked beetroot, ready for the jars.
I decided to chop my beetroot quite small; julienne, because I thought it would save time cutting it in the future when we'll eat it on salads or in a sandwich etc.
Plus I thought the smaller the surface area, the more the pickling vinegar could impart it's tangy flavour in the beetroot.

Then I filled the jars with the cooked beetroot strips, topped the jars with my pickling vinegar, and sealed the lids tight.

And that was it, job done, I placed the jars in the larder to do their magic.

I'd read various recipes about how long you should wait until eating the pickled beetroot, all of which seemed to state different times from one week, to one month.

I waited about a month, turning the jars upside down occasionally to make sure all of the beetroot was getting a good soaking in the spicy pickling vinegar.
Finally, unable to wait no longer we opened one of the jars of beetroot to taste it. It was seriously delicious - perfect!
In fact the beetroot was so tasty that despite promising some to family, I decided to keep it all for ourselves.
Just in case you are wondering; the neighbour who generously gave us the beetroot didn't want any of it back, he had lots of his own to eat.
Do you like beetroot?
Do you like pickled beetroot?
And finally, do you pickled your own beetroot, and if so what ingredients do you use?