Purple Carrots, Yellow Beets and Blue Potatoes

We often have preconceived notions of what are food should look like.  The term carrot top refers to someone with red hair and beet red is that dark purple red.  Mashed potatoes are a creamy white, but never blue.  This year in my garden I have been experimenting with heritage vegetables.  I have a general interest in old varieties and for some reason I was inspired to try some of the old varieties that are being brought back by the seed sellers.  This year I planted purple carrots, these are the original carrot before Dutch plant breeders began to play with them in the 1700's.  The royal family of the Netherlands is called the House of Orange and to please them Dutch gardeners breed the purple color out of the carrot and created an all orange carrot, which to this day is still the standard.  The purple carrot is orange inside and is beautiful when sliced into a salad.  Continuing on the purple theme, we have been growing a purple bean for the past two years.  It is really a green bean and looses its purple color when cooked.  It to is beautiful in a salad, but the deciding factor is that the plants yield more beans than other varieties.  Beets for me were always a purple red pickle you served with a meal.  I never thought to eat otherwise until I met my wife who is of Ukrainian heritage and began to eat borsch.  This winter I had dinner at the Route 40 Soup Company in Turner Valley.  Chef Mark served up a terrific yellow beet borsch and off I went in search of yellow beet seed, actually called a golden beet.  I now have a new favorite vegetable, boiled yellow beets.  I start by boiling the roots for about 20 minutes, I then add the stalks for about 5 more minutes and finish with the leaves for another 3 or 4 minutes.  I serve this with a little salt and butter with a splash of vinegar.  This is a great vegetable to grow, just like the traditional red beet.  You can eat the root and the leaves and not just as a pickle.  Last night I also served for the first time Russian Blue Potatoes, I dug the first hill from my garden and boiled a few of these up.  The potato is you guessed it purple on the outside and a rich blue on the inside.  It had wonderful flavor that will be even better as the potato matures. In Peru where the potato originates there are hundreds of different varieties in a rainbow of colors.  It is unfortunate that we had to choose the bland colored varieties as our main ones.  There always seems to be something bland colored on our plate like potatoes, rice or pasta needing to be livened up with some more colorful food.   I am still waiting for my tomatoes to ripen as they are all still green.  My garden should yield yellow, brown and purple varieties later this fall.  Am I going to switch fully over to strange colored vegetables?  Probably not, but they make an interesting addition to my garden which keeps it fun.  They will also be great for when I have company for dinner.  You eat first with your eyes and this will add to the dinner conversation.  It is important that we as gardeners and consumers not forget the huge variety of heritage vegetables available to us.  By growing and eating these we are continuing a 10,000 year tradition of multiple varieties in agriculture.