I love beets.  Beets go way back.  During the 1800s, French Chef Jean Pierre Vermeil brought beets to popularity in the French Cuisine.  Vermeil always wore a hat, and often kept a beet underneath.  What a beet head.

Beets grow great in cool foggy weather.  Around 800 BC, an Assyrian text describes beets growing in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the wonders of the ancient world.  Cool and foggy.

The Romans used the leaves as a culinary herb and as a medicine and they also used the beetroot as medicine before the Greeks began doing so.  By the 3rd century AD, the Romans had begun using the beetroot as food rather than just medicine.  Augustus was Emperor then.  He loved beets too, but did not keep one under his helmet.