Second chances for slandered vegetables

There are very few vegetables I don't like: mung bean sprouts, plain red radishes (though I will eat them a la francaise, thinly sliced with sweet butter on bread) and -- until recently -- beets.

Sprouts (while packed full of nutrition -- they're like the stem cells of the vegetable world) and radishes are just too bitter for me. My beet aversion dates back to childhood, when a friend's mother was on a canned beets-and-cottage cheese diet. (Hey, it was the '80s. It was a crash diet that didn't work.) She ate them straight from the can, and the earthy smell and texture was overwhelming to my 7-year-old palate. Beets weren't common in my house, so I never tried them again until my French host mother served me a pickled beet salad. It was OK, but I still wasn't on board the beet wagon.

This summer, I have a goal to pick one vegetable I've never cooked or eaten each week. So far, I've discovered that rainbow chard (eaten but never cooked at home) is my new favorite green, kohlrabi is a great in a gratin and mung bean sprouts are tolerable in small doses when doused with a sweet Korean barbecue sauce.
And beets, glorious beets! I'm a fan. I roasted them with olive oil and rosemary from my garden, cooked up some quinoa and mixed grains and sauteed the beet greens. Two hearty nutritious lunches. Beets are high in sugar, but they're fabulous! They're still not as high on my "veggies I heart" list as chard, red peppers or broccoli, but they're a great second-string vegetable. I imagine that this fall, they'll find a place on my table more often.
Are there any vegetables you once loathed that you've learned to love? Any vegetable you just can't stomach?

Are you a fan of bean sprouts? How do you serve sprouts?

Get your manna raw!

After that posting about unsafe snacks, here's one that's good and presumably safe! We often get to try new snacks here, which can be good and bad -- the snacks and their tempting availability!

On Tuesday, we got Wild Bars: raw, organic cacao-based nutrition bars that are full of goodness like wild blue-green algae (1,700 mg of it) and dark agave nectar. (No sugar or corn syrup -- this is the only sweetener.) The bars also contain maca, hemp seed and mesquite.

They are crazy good for you! 55% of your daily fiber! Plus tons of Omega-3 fatty acids and B12 (great for blood and nerve cells)!

A couple of others tried them, but no one else wanted anymore than a taste. I finished a Mayan Spice bar and tried the Mountain Mint. (It's in my desk, waiting for an afternoon when I need a pick-me-up!)

The bar has an odd look: black and a bit green with bits of macadamia nuts throughout. But don't judge. The Mayan Spice was quite spicy, with a really rich raw chocolate flavor. (More cocoa powder than dark chocolate. It was tasty though.) They're not lying when they say there's blue green algae -- my tongue turned green! And after, the cayenne's heat lingered on my tongue.

They boast that the bars boost energy, and I believe it. I was a bit hyper later that afternoon. (Oh, and they're $5, raw, certified organic, vegan, kosher and gluten-free!)