While each of these sea vegetables is delicious on its own, when combined, they add fun texture and an impressive list of health benefits.  If for some reason you are a bit squeamish about introducing sea vegetables into your diet, this is an easy, tasty way to do it.  Sea vegetables offer unique nutritional benefits that are incomparable to other foods, because they absorb minerals found in the sea.  Plus, they a high amount of iodine, a mineral that is often hard to come by in many other foods.  Here are some of the fabulous things sea vegetables have to offer:

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 

10-12 oz pearl onions

1 tsp black peppercorns

5 whole allspice berries

a few sprigs fresh tarragon

1 T salt

1/2 c water

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 

I'm going to ramble on here for a bit about Norwegian stuff.  If you just want the recipe, page down.  If you want a story, read on.

One of things I learned in college is that I love pickled beets. My alma mater, Luther College in Decorah, IA, has a very strong Norwegian heritage.  Each Sunday one of the dining halls had a special brunch.  Whenever I went, I would inevitebly leave the buffet line with half my plate full of pickled beets rolled up in fresh  lefse.  Other Scandinavian foods like pickled herring and lutefisk also found their way into our college food service kitchens - but never to my plate.   All I wanted was the pickled beets and  lefse(I was a dedicated vegetarian at the time anyway).  I loved the sweet and salty beets, bitey and deep scarlet, especially when wrapped up in a fresh piece of tender lefse.  

Lefse  is basically the Norwegian tortilla - a paper thin, round, flat bread of made of potato, butter, flour, and water, cooked on a griddle and flipped with a big, flat stick.  As with most traditional foods, there is a serious technique to make making good  lefse.  Bad  lefse  - most found in grocery stores - is like pasty junk.  But good, fresh  lefse  melts in your mouth like nothing else on earth.  Especially if eaten warm, and spread with butter and sugar, like the old folks do.  I always liked mine spread with lingonberry jam, drizzled with maple syrup and butter, or stuffed with savory things like Swedish meatballs or sausage. Or beets. 

A cute little Norwegian woman makes fresh  lefse by hand and sells it at the local co-op.  And at Nordic Fest, Decorah's annual summer festival of all things Norwegian, fresh  lefse  is made all day long and sold on the street.  For a couple dollars you get a huge round of  lefse  and have your choice of toppings. People wait in long lines for it, the way that people wait for corn dogs at normal carnivals.   Nordic Fest is really fun, if you're into Norwegian stuff - you can watch Norwegian dancing, see the parade, visit Vesterheim Norwegian American Museum, participate in other fun Norwegian activites, and try a variety of other crazy Norwegian delicacies.   I remember one particularly rough Nordic Fest a few years back when I tried a little cup of rommegrot. Rommegrot is a thick, rich porridge made of wheat flour, sugar, butter, and milk, served warm with melted butter and sugar on top (I'm not kidding).   Norwegian immigrants ate rommegrot  with coffee for dinner during the cold, long winters on prairie.  I'm not sure what self-destructive sort of curiosity compelled me to try it, because even then I knew it was a risky choice.  After eating my little cup  - which was delicious, I have to admit - I thought I was going to die.   Rommegrot  + 95* weather + my digestive system = pure hell.  

In short, most Norwegian food is not friendly to the gluten, sugar, or dairy intolerant.  I have often wondered if  gluten free  lefse  would be possible, but I just don't think it is; the gluten is what MAKES the tenderness of the  lefse possible.  I fear any GF replication would just be a sad, disappointing experience; I think  lefse  now exists in memory alone.

On the plus side, do you know what Norwegian treat is totally okay for us to eat?  Pickled beets, baby, that's what.  So let's get on with it.  Let's talk beets.  This is post about beets, not lefse or rommegrot.  I had been eyeing up Sally's Pickled Beet recipe for quite some time.  Instead of using raw vegetables like most of the other cultured veggie recipes in the book, like the recipe for Pickled Turnips and Beet s (YUM!), her recipe uses roasted beets.  If you've never roasted beets, you must try it.  Roasting really concentrates the sweetness; roasted beets win over even the staunchest of anti-beet individuals.  Leave the skin on, poke them a few times, and put them in the oven.  Magic!  The skin peels right off once they are done.  Then your beets can be served up as is, used in soups, salads, or other entrees, or used for this tasty recipe.  

So, try them out.  You'll feel just like a Norwegian grandmother. They are delicious, and remarkably easy. The deep, sweet flavor of the roasted beets is accentuated with a hint of cardamom and offset by the salty pickly quality.   The water turned into a thick, salty sweet goo, and the beets are the most beautiful deep garnet color you can ever imagine. Yeah, I know that this photo doesn't look completely appetizing, but I promise you, they are good.  I let them ferment for three days, and then transferred to the fridge. In fact, as I write this, I am enjoying them in a salad with romaine, fresh snap peas, amaranth, fresh dill, and a drizzle of olive oil and kefir.  It is delicious.  And the beets keep getting better each time I eat them!

12 medium beets (I used about 4 large beets)

seeds from 3 cardamom pods

2 T salt

1 c water