There are many foods from my childhood that I swore I hated
and would never eat after my mother no longer had control of my meal plans. Mom
served the items from a can: mushrooms, asparagus, peas, corn, green
beans and BEETS!
I have come to love all the above mentioned foods after
discovering the fresh varieties, including BEETS! Well, maybe love is a
strong word for the beets but I can eat one now as long as it’s fresh from the
garden and roasted. Notice I said one.
For years, my friends and various exes tried to convince me
that beets were good. I always said “Beets taste like dirt, won’t eat ‘em!” I
was told “Well you just haven’t had it prepared correctly.” So they would order
lovely (to look at) roasted beet salads with goat cheese and make me take a
bite. Blech, tasted like dirt with goat cheese on it. But I always kept trying.
My mother would say “Just take a bite, you might like it.”
That has worked with mushrooms and asparagus when I had it fresh but well,
beets, blech. Then I started learning how to vegetable garden. My garden
buddy said “Let’s plant beets!” I said “Beets taste like dirt. You can have
‘em.” 
Well, my husband at the time loved beets. So I brought a few home and roasted them for him. I did take a bite and well let’s just say I didn’t spit it out. Hmm, that wasn’t horrible or too dirt like. Eventually, after a few years of growing beets, I got to the point I could eat half of a small roasted beet. I even would order roasted beet salad with goat cheese when out with the girls. I would eat a couple of bites of the beets and give them to the others, then eat my red stained goat cheese and lettuce.
I have graduated to eating one medium size roasted beet if
it’s fresh from the garden. My wonderful boyfriend and I grow beets and he
loves them. I also have discovered a great recipe for beet hummus. It’s pretty
good and a crazy magenta color.
I also have dried beet slices, which I then pulverized in my
spice grinder. The point of this was to see if I could substitute beet powder
for red food coloring in the marinade for tandoori chicken. When one goes to an
Indian restaurant (or at least the one I like in my town) it is a toasty red
color. The tandoori doesn’t taste any different if you don’t use the food
coloring, it’s just more colorful. 