An Alarming Discovery

Last night I made beets with my gnocchi (and a thyme butter sauce). I should disambiguate the 'with': at Z's insistence I dumped the chopped beets into the pot of hot water with the cute lil potato dumplings. Now, the water promptly turned that wonderful beety hue that you green-pointers should probably remember from all of the ukranian borscht you've had (without sour-cream which gives is a opacity not present in my potted water). I decided to look into how awesome beets were since I was under the impression that anything deep purple had polyphenols which are super awesome only to find out :

"Although spinach and other green, leafy vegetables contain significant amounts of Vitamin K, the high oxalic acid content in spinach or other sources such as rhubarb, Swiss chard, beets / beet greens, and parsley, etc., promotes vascular degeneration and increases the risk for bleeding in prone individuals". (from here)

That's right, beets'll make you bleed to death!!!!! (Spinach too, I guess. I wonder why the cartoon never showed Popeye all bruised up because his vascular system was so weak. Probably some communist plot.) Happily all the Eastern Europeans around the area that eat a lot of beets also drink a LOT, thinning out their blood and hopefully putting less stress on their already weakened vascular walls.

I might have found a way out of the problem that doesn't involve my not giving up my favorite 'root that ruins whatever you're wearing if you try to prepare it on account of its propensity to dye everything deep purple.' these folk seem to be telling me that if I just blanch my beets long enough they will destroy neither my clothing nor my vascular system (If I understand the abstract). I just hope blanching doesn't destroy the wonderful taste, because anyone who has had house salad 1 from the lunch menu at Roebling Tea Room (RIP?) knows, a tasteless beet is not a nice thing to have on a plate.