Slice a colossal chioggia beet vertically and you get a piece of art in every slice. These slices are destined for a pot of borscht. With chioggia beets, you don’t get a deep red borscht, but it tastes just as good.

An onion I found hiding among the weeds, revealed four developing buds inside. Grow your own food, and you are freed from the tyranny of standards. Grocers and produce buyers demand that the produce they buy adhere to rigid standards of size, color, shape, and weight, which means that any onion you buy in a supermarket has been stripped of any personality. Only the ones which conform to a rigid standard of what an onion is supposed to look like make it onto the store shelves. But grow a row of onions and you get to pick them at all stages of growth, and enjoy an endless variety of sizes, colors, and shapes.