April 25th, 2019

I'm not certain if you noticed but there are a strange looking pink or red or purpley blotches on my hands. Do you see them? That is not some wierd rash, it's beet juice.  I forgot how badly beet juice stains. And no matter how much washing or scrubbing or what product I used, while it did fade, it did not go away entirely.  And naturally this was just before I had to leave to work at the museum yesterday. Naturally.  That is how it always works.

In my eternal search for new recipes, I ran across an interesting one recently for a what is, essentially, a vegetable stew.  It had such lovely ingredients:  onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots and beets.  I almost never find beets as an ingredient.  I was intrigued.  So Tuesday, since I had to grocery shop anyway, I also bought some beets.  Lovely, earthy, fat, purple beets complete with stems and leaves.  I cannot remember the last time I bought beets.  

I was kind of excited to get started. I always get a little giddy when undertaking a new recipe.  Clearly  my threshold for excitement is pretty low.  

About an hour before leaving for work, I happily began peeling and chopping vegetables into big chunks, pouring in water, administering herbs, salt and pepper liberally and a splash of cooking wine because, why the heck not.  All went into the slow cooker on low for the next 6 hours. There we go. Easy peasy.  And I began cleaning up.  Finally the kitchen was clean again and I went to wash my hands and noticed that it looked as if I had sustained a weird burn.  

I hadn't of course.  It was beet juice stain. And that's when I remembered. Oh yeah. This crap stains.  Drat!  I scrubbed with soap and water.  I rubbed my hands with lemons.  I even tried hydrogen peroxide.  The result being that my hands were so very clean I could have preformed surgery, but the stain remained.  No one visiting the museum said anything to me about it yesterday, but their eyes widened in surprise as soon as my blotchy digits came into view.  

I know it will fade.  I suppose the good part is that I got NONE on my clothes. It was a miracle.  Beet stains on clothes is bad. Very Bad.  It's almost as bad as cranberry juice stain. Or cherry stains.  I'm sure if I googled it I would find the perfect directions to remove any of those stains from any fabric.  But I found nothing to remove it from my hands.  Other than time.

When  my boys were very young, I remember how they would have stains on their faces after eating spaghetti.  They all were very independent thinkers from the very beginning and insisted upon feeding themselves at a very young age.  I mean so young that most little ones would still be spoon fed by a parent.  I encouraged that feeling of accomplishment and independence of course. But it came at a price!   So there they would be, in their high chairs, struggling with and eventually abandoning their spoon or fork and end up using their hands.  This ended with them having a great sense of confidence and the child, the highchair, the clothing AND the floor all needed a good wash afterwards.  All spaghetti eating clothes worn at that age had permanent stains on the front.

I too cannot be trusted to eat tomato based pasta sauce without mishap.  I try to never ever wear anything white to an Italian meal.  I know it will not end well.  Of course we have better cleaning products now.  OxyClean is amazing.  I use that stuff on a regular basis.  I have not yet found any stain it will not remove.  From fabric.  Not my hands.  

When my sister and I were little, our mother would occasionally make these frozen grape juice things for us.  She had this ice tray that was in two parts, each part having compartments that were half a sphere.  Once put together, it could be filled, I suppose, with any liquid.  But the only thing I remember her putting in it was grape juice. Lovely dark purple, sweet grape juice.  She would put a toothpick in each one, and we would be ordered to eat it outside.  My sister and I would dangle, belly down on our swings, slowly swaying back and forth, toes dragging in the dirt as we ate our drippy yummy purple frozen grape juice spheres.  We sucked out the juice first and then munch the leftover ice.  Our fingers would be purple stained but any drips landed in the dirt beneath our swings. Clever eh?

I was going to say, who nowadays would give there child a frozen treat that they knew was highly likely to permanently stain their clothing.  And then another thought occurred. Who, nowadays would give there child a frozen treat on a toothpick?  Well it was a different time back then.  We never choked on our toothpicks.  We never stabbed each other with our toothpicks and we never put an eye out with it either.  Sometimes, when I observe today's kids, I wonder how we all managed to survive our childhoods way back then.

But I digress.  Foods that stain.  Yeah. What you gonna do.  Life is messy sometimes.  The veggie stew was actually very good.  Tim liked it a lot.  The stains on my hands are fading. I got to try a brand new recipe and life goes on.  It's all good.