Harlow Farm gave us enough small beets to make almost 20 quarts of pickles for our school salad bar. I had noticed that these were a popular item at lunch time. The After School students of all ages got together for a ‘pickling bee’ yesterday. It was impressive to observe how kind and encouraging the older students were toward the younger ones. The beets were pre-

boiled and cool, so it was very easy for even the youngest children to pop off the peels. After the bowls were filled, older students were the ‘quality control’ managers, making sure all skins were removed. I had brine boiling to ladle into sterile filled jars. I overheard a few great conversations among students as the red beet juice colored their fingers:

“So this is where the expression ‘beet red’ or ‘red as a beet’ comes from.” “I don’t need to buy fake blood for Halloween. I can just cook beets.” ” Hey, these taste sweet!”

Notice how all are working together on this project. (You can double click photos to enlarge.)

Measuring cinnamon and cloves.

Cleanup crew!

You can find the recipe for these pickled beets at Allrecipes.com. We just added 1/4 tsp. cinnamon to each jar.