Beet juice is a good idea. It's already sweet, but has an earthier taste than fruit and mixes well with other vegetable juices.
Beets are also an essential ingredient in the northern version of that famous southern dish, "Red Velvet Cake".
Some of you already know this story but for the newbies: "red velvet cake" was invented in the southern states, and got its name from what happens to chocolate when you mix it with buttermilk in the cake batter. It is closely-related to devil's food cake (which might have originally been "red devil cake").
Well, then several things happened.
One of them was World War 2, during which time sugar was rationed. Northern cooks started adding sweet BEETS to compensate for the paucity of sugar, and also to enhance the reddish brown color. Vegetable purees mixed into cake batter also make the cakes moist and tender.
When the war was over, southern cooks stopped adding any beets, but started putting RED FOOD COLORING into the batter, because modern cocoa is usually "Dutch process" which doesn't change color. (they probably also don't use buttermilk anymore; a modern red velvet cake is basically the same thing as devil's food cake, with red die added to it).
Well, but the beet-cocoa mixture is an intriguing and fairly wholesome one, and beet red is harmless whereas may people think artificial red food color is highly neurotropic (I have no idea; I won't touch the stuff).
For that matter, beets are a good source of natural red dye. You can use it in both food and to dye clothing (heck, it's always accidentally staining something...
).
About fermentation pickles: we need a wiki entry for them if we don't already have one. Basically, you put them in a jar or pickle crock (preferably one with a lid to smother out the kam yeast...yuck), add other flavors to taste, pack it tight, and cover with just enough brine to keep them wet and salty. The Lactobacillus that live in brine are harmless to humans and keep pathogens and spoilage microbes out.
Fermentation pickles have a fermentation smell and are quite sour due to the lactic acid excreted by the Lactobacillus. The one you are most familiar with is Sauerkraut, but bear in mind that home-made Sauerkraut is significantly tastier than the canned stuff from the store, which is cut too finely, and cooked.
It is one of the cheapest ways of preserving food, the primary cost being salt, and it is good for preserving vitamins including that delicate one, C.
