Despite the extreme heat we have had the past several days, our beets seem to be absolutely thriving.  In fact, they seem to be the only thing in our garden these days that are not being absolutely devoured by Japanese beetles.  Ug.

But enough of the negative and on to the positive…these beets.  Yum.  We pulled up our first round of beets this week and we were thrilled to find they had filled out nicely beneath the thick layer of soil.  My favorite way to eat beets is to pickle them, so I used a very easy pickling recipe from Putting Food By (listed below with a link), and before I knew it we had jars full of tart and scrumptious pickled beets.

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Some of our favorite home preservation books are:

Putting Food By by Janet Greene, Ruth Hertzberg and Beatrice Vaughan

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver (There are some great canning recipes scattered throughout the piece.)

The Big Book of Preserving the Harvest by Carol W. Costenbader