Beet Salad With Oranges, Walnuts and Blue Cheese

I was really excited to try fresh beets, and decided to make a salad with some fun add-in's.   I've read the beets will stain your hands if you don't wear gloves, so I picked up some latex gloves in the cleaning aisle of the grocery store.  I think it's more important once the beets are cooked, but I wasn't taking any chances and wore the gloves the entire time I worked with the beets!

First I prepared the beets by scrubbing them, then chopping off the greens and slicing the bottom so they would sit flat in the baking dish.

I placed them in a baking dish in about an inch of water before baking them at 350 for maybe 45 minutes.

I baked them after dinner one night, knowing I needed to get started on the beet experiment but not being able to find enough time to do the baking and make the salad by dinner-time on any particular day.  Then I threw them in a baggie in the fridge for a few days.  But eventually I worked up the nerve to make the salad.  I love trying new veggies, and while I like pickled beets, the fresh beet is a whole new animal for me.  So I put the gloves back on and peeled them.  I wasn't able to just slide the skin off like with a blanched tomato; maybe I didn't cook them long enough for that.  I ended up using a paring knife to remove the skin.  Then I sliced them into eighths.  So far, so good.  I sliced up two oranges and tossed them with the beets, a quarter cup of blue cheese crumbles, two ounces of walnut pieces, and a generous splash of balsamic vinegar, with some olive oil and salt and pepper.  It was gorgeous served over a bed of romaine, see for yourself:

And after I picked the beets out, it was quite good.  I know!   I wanted to love them, I really did.  And my list of "no way" foods is really, really short.  But it just got longer by one: fresh beets.  Maybe.  A friend gave me a beet salad recipe that is different from what I did here, and she swore her kids and husband loved it.  So I will give beets one more try.  It doesn't hurt that they're pretty.