I am not particularly fond of beets except in salads, but I like canned beets. I particularly enjoy the slightly sweet taste of canned beets. Harvard beet salad is one of my favorite salads. I use Valencia oranges because I think they are often juicier than others.

I think your family will like this easy beet salad recipe. If you can get your children to try it, I suspect they will like it as well. You may have to remove the onions though.

This is the information the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) Both beets and oranges provide flavonoids, one group of phytochemicals that seems to help lower risk of cancer and heart disease. Flavonoids, too, can prevent injury from free radicals by converting them to more stable, less-reactive forms. Beets have even more of the antioxidant vitamin C than oranges.

Harvard Beet Salad Recipe

INGREDIENTS

1 16 ounce jar Harvard beets
2 large oranges, peeled and thickly sliced
1 medium red onion, peeled and thinly sliced

DIRECTIONS

Save juice from beets and oranges. Mix together, and pour over layered beets, oranges and onion slices. Makes about 3 to 4 servings.

Hints
*This salad is delicious served as is, if you must have a dressing, sprinkle Nakano brand original flavor rice vinegar over the mix.
*If you have kids use navel oranges and buy extras. They are easy to peel and make a great snack.
*Not particularly fond of beets but feel the need to eat them because they are healthy? Peel and shred a medium sized beet into your cole slaw. It's quite good and make a nice presentation; the cole slaw becomes a slight pink.
*Sliced cooked beets and sliced cooked yams make a tasty first course, just alternate thin slices on a bed of lettuce.

FYI: Beets have a very high natural sugar content. Beets along with sweet potatoes and yams are delicious roasted. Roasting brings out the full sweet rich flavor of the vegetables. Jarred Harvard are quite sweet with the added sugar so this is not a dish to have more than a couple of times a month, a small serving will suffice. If your child will eat this dish, start working on ways to introduce cooked beets, without sugar or pehaps raw in salads ;-)