Beetroot Powder For Cancer...And General Health (Part 3)

Dateline: 7 January 2017 AD

"Big uglies" from my January garden!

In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series I  told you about how I came to learn about beetroot powder and it's remarkable health benefits. In this essay I will explain how I recently made my own beet powder.

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January in upstate New York is typically freezing cold with plenty of snow on the ground, but it will occasionally warm up a bit and rain. That was our meteorological situation a few days back, and it occurred to me that there were still beets in my garden. 

I've had beetroot powder on my mind for awhile and I wondered if maybe those beets in my garden were still sound. I knew that beets have a high sugar content and will take some freezing and thawing before eventually turning to globs of mush, which is always the fate of an uncovered beetroot in these parts come spring. 

If I had covered the roots with straw in the fall they would stay sound into spring, but I didn't do that. The beets still in my garden were what I call "big uglies." They were overgrown; they were well past their most appealing stage of growth. They weren't worth covering... or so I've always thought. 

It turned out that the big uglies were perfectly sound. Their tops had frozen and turned to a withered slime, but not the roots. I pulled a few, hacked away the slimy tops, scraped off some of the earth that came up with the root, and brought them into the house. That's them in the picture above.

I washed the roots, and cut away the stubby stems on their tops, and they looked a little more respectable, as you can see in this next picture...

I contemplated peeling those beets, but instead, opted to just trim off the most rough and "calloused" skin near the tops, and this is what the beets then looked like...

My plan for turning those beets into powder was to first shred them and put them into our Excalibur dehydrator to dry until crisp. Having recently purchased a Vitamix blender, I decided to try shredding some beetroot in that. So I cut up some smaller chunks...

The Vitamix company says that the way to shred vegetables with their machine is to first, fill the container partway with water, then put in the beets, then manually pulse the blade until you have the degree of shreddedness you desire. That's what I did. It was easy and fun. Here is the result...

Yes, it did a lovely job of shredding those big uglies, but seeing all the liquid, infused with so  much beet goodness, was a little disconcerting. It would be a shame to pour that liquid down the drain! So I separated the shredded beet and saved the juice...

The beet juice I saved was powerfully beety. I drank a glass of it. A little at a time. I sensed as I drank that liquid that it was something nurtitionally spectacular, and that I had better not drink too much at one time. I'll say more about fresh Vitamixed beetroot juice shortly. 

I didn't feel that shredding in the Vitamix, and losing all that beet goodness to the liquid was the best way to go about making wholesome beet powder, so I layered the Vitamixed shreds on one dehydrator tray and proceeded to shred the rest of the beets by hand. Here's a picture of the Vitamixed pieces ready to go into the food dryer...

As I said, I shredded the rest of the beets by hand. They shredded quickly and easily. I filled several more trays with the shreds, as you can see in this next picture...

After shredding the last of the beets and getting them into the dehydrator, I had several beet "stubs" (you can see them in the background of the above picture) that were left over after hand-shredding as far as I was comfortable doing. I put those pieces in the Vitamix, along with the shredding juice (made previously) and blended them into very small particles (the Vitamix is particularly good at "juicing" a vegetable). I ended up with a full half gallon canning jar of raw beetroot juice and put it in the fridge.

I have been drinking that juice every day since then, but only a little at a time...

Fresh beetroot juice is an acquired taste. I've been drinking one small glass of it in the morning and one in the afternoon. It is a grainy, earthy, dirty, wonderful juice. I can feel my body responding to the little glass of liquified beetroot when I drink it. It's almost like a body shock. At first, I would gasp after taking a drink, like a person would gasp when coming to the surface after being underwater for too long. And there is definitely an energy boost. Maybe it's more of an adrenalin rush—like you might get after surviving a near accident when driving an automobile. Whatever the case, I like it. In moderation.

You can bet I'll be making more fresh beetroot juice with the Vitamix. I can see it being a winter-long daily drink for me.

Now, as for the beetroot powder, I'll show you how that turned out in Part 4— the conclusion of this little Upland series. 

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Click Here to go to Part-4 of this Series