Purple Velvet

Deep Purple velvet is the rich color.   And the taste?  Yummers!   I had occasionally eaten them as a child, but I don’t remember every being impressed.  But then a few months ago, we had Pickled Beets as a side dish with our dinner.  Man, I sure had forgotten just how tasty they could be!!  As we were enjoying them I said:  ” we should have these more often”!   But, I guess Pickled Beets is just one of those things that is easily forgotten about, as a veggie choice!

So last week I stopped at Pick ‘ n Save for a few things.   While I was looking for something else, I spotted the beets.   I just had to buy them!  After lunch I decided to have just a couple.  I read the nutritional info—15 calories per serving/ no fat !   This was just too good to be true!!   Something that I liked so much, and it had so few calories!!  Of course, 1 serving was only 4 beets and the jar contained 9 servings.  But I was a good girl, and only had  2 servings!!  (OK, maybe I cheated and had one extra beet–but they were so good!)  I put the rest back into the fridge for another time–maybe I would serve them with dinner some night, since Hubby loves them too!

The next day I opened the fridge and spotted those beets.   They were just looking so good!!  My mouth began to dance with anticipation!!  So, I opened the jar and put 4 beets into a bowl.  After I ate those—another 4, and another.  And as I continued to eat all the beets, I added more and more of the pickled juice to my taste treats!!  When all the beets were gone,  and the juice remained, I thought to myself:     I am sure that the juice is considered as part of the calorie count, after all it is in the jar and actually tastes better than the beets!!  So, one dip of my spoon at a time, I drained that jar dry!  I rationalized it, by telling myself that I still had only eaten about 100 calories, and it was so tasty!!

But deep down I knew that the calories were for the beets only!  Of course I only came to this conclusion after the jar was empty and I read further down the label where one of the main ingredients was High Fructose Syrup–hmmm, do you think that was in the juice??  No wonder I can’t loose any weight!!         

I would like to think that there are other people out there that enjoy the taste of the juice as much as I do, and that in a perfect world, everything in a jar should be included in the calorie count—but every recipe that I looked at, said to drain the beets!  I don’t get it—waisting the best part?  It is just wrong.  And while we are talking about the best part–who doesn’t eat all the juice and onions left in the bottom of the jar after you finish the Pickled Herring??   I’m just sayin’—YUM!!!!