I did it!

I found the beets I enjoy for their own sake.

Not the ones I tolerate. Not the ones I like more or less, but can perfectly easily live without. Not the ones I'm cooking because I said I'd do this, damnit!

It's the ones Jenn introduced to me. The raw ones grated directly into a salad.

They make the salad all pretty and, in a salad, their very *earthy* tastes aren't quite as strong. Plus, with the whole range of diverse flavors in your average salad, they don't stand out that much anyway. They're just a pleasant undertone instead of "I'm eating something sweet, and garlicky, and... dirt".

Wonderful. You should try this.

A podcast on the NYTimes blog thingy about beets
Another one

Be sure to read the comments to the above links - that's where the action is.

I am so sick of the board books

They are, by their nature, bigger than the regular books. So I don't shelve them with the regular books. This means we neglect to read them. Big waste of space.

So I'm done. I'm sorting through them now. The ones that the nieces have both outgrown? Well, I know two expecting mothers this summer, that's dealt with. The ones that I can get in paperback format? I'll do that, and then pass the board book versions along. And the ones that are perfect as they are? They can stay.

I bought (almost) all these books, I think switching them around is the right thing to do.

In the next week or so I'll make a list of those I want to buy in another format, that'll simplify my life. I can then work on that slowly. It's not like we're reading them as board books anyway.