My mom always loved beets, and, as a picky child, I disliked so many of her favorite dishes (yams with butter and tomato slices with mayonnaise spring to mind) that beets were only one more mystery of adulthood. Why? Would I, too, like beets one day? Impossible! I thought then and well into my twenties (after which I had turned onto tomatoes, mayonnaise, yams, and a raft of other foods the six-year-old me thought "yucky") that beets were just terrible.

I was not alone in my dislike of beets. 99.9% of people in the U.S. today have a loved one who hates beets. [Note: I made this statistic up. But it's true, I swear, my husband says they taste like mold and I'm a freakin' awesome chef.] Beets are probably the most-maligned vegetable out there. But as I have learned in my quest for local, seasonable deliciousness, beets are underrated for a number of reasons:

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• Beets grow virtually year-round, so you can find them fresh in the middle of winter at your farmer's market.
• Beets are pretty, cooked and sliced, and come in a variety of gorgeous colors so your salad looks like Chagall seen through a kaleidoscope.
• Beets are easy to grow in the garden, so you can save major cash on your veggies.
• Beets are really good for you.
• Beets are a snap to cook (and no peeling!). Cut off the tops, stick 'em in a crock with a little water, put 'em in the oven and wait an hour. Slide the skins off, slice, eat.
• Beets taste great with goat cheese. I love excuses to eat more goat cheese.
• Beets are economical; you can eat the root and the greens.
• Beets are an essential ingredient to borscht, which is delicious.
• Beets are trendy!

Beets will always be hated by the vocal majority. But that's no reason you have to hate them, too. Just try to resist a plateful of reds, oranges, and golds, sprinkled with chevre, drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar... I'll be eating beets while the rest of you are ordering tasteless salads with romaine trucked in from California and mealy, watery tomatoes shipped up from Chile, and I'll be smirking a bit.

Homeownership is the American Dream, but in a lot of people's minds, owning a condo doesn't quite count. It's the somewhat less attractive step-sister. There are some good reasons to avoid condos: if you're obsessed with the idea of having a white picket fence, a big private yard, and a detached home, then a condo won't offer you any of those things. But here are some of the great things about condos:

• One major complaint about condos is the homeowner's association (HOA) dues. But guess what? Those are used to cover expenses that you would have anyway. For instance, the $150.49 per month that I pay for dues at the condo I own covers "Refuse Removal, Water, Sewer, Master Insurance, Swimming Pool, Exterior Maintenance, Road Maintenance, Landscaping, Snow Removal, Playground, and Walking/Jogging Trails." Most of those are things you'd have to shell out for with a single-family home and, with a well-run HOA, you'll actually save money because of the economies of scale: landscaping for 20 units together is cheaper than the same service for 20 individual homes. Best of all, you won't have to worry about coordinating maintenance for anything other than what's between your walls.

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• Condos are often less expensive than owning a single-family home. Here's an idea: instead of buying one $200,000 home, buy two $100,000 condos and use one as an investment property to generate cash flow and long-term appreciation for your retirement!

Condominiums aren't for everyone, but for a lot of people, they are a far better investment than a single-family home.

It's all too easy to make fun of RadioShack. The home electronics chain endures with whole walls devoted to different kinds of wires, cables and connectors. A 2007 spoof , "Even CEO Can't Figure Out How RadioShack Still In Business," from The Onion has its chief executive saying, "I wouldn't think that people still buy enough strobe lights and extension cords to support an entire nationwide chain, but I guess they must."

Well, I certainly do. I'll go there for an ethernet cable, a cheap phone, an AC adapter, even a quick birthday present for a child's party. If I need some kind of component to get my ancient VCR hooked up to my new TV, I know where to turn.

RadioShack is a bridge from old technology to the new. The stores are ubiquitous and remain an easy stop for picking up items that can solve all sorts of electronics problems faced by modern families -- a phone with three handsets, a box to convert your television to receive digital signals (that was a big recent driver of sales).

Even though these men and women are first and foremost legislators who shape the face of our legal system; many of us take for granted the "little" things they can do for us. I know up until a year ago I had only a faint notion of what my congressman did outside of legislating, but that all changed when I ran into consumer issue that even I could not fix. I soon found out that my local congressman was severely underrated; on top of representing my interests in legislature, he also provides me many other services.

The formative experience that made me realize how much I had underrated my congressman was when I had trouble consolidating some student loans. After numerous phone calls to both lenders with no results I reached out to Jim Jordan, my local representative. His office was able to get in touch with the right people and get the loans consolidated within a matter of weeks; saving me close to $300 a month. For more on how to use your congressman or woman to solve student issues check out WalletPop's guide.

On top of that helping you with student loan disputes they can also:

• Help with federal agencies such as housing, Veterans' benefits, Social Security and Medicare.
  Arrange tours at points of interest in DC.
• Assist with Passport and immigration issues.
• Nominate you for a U.S. Service Academy such as West Point.
• Help you get a Congressional internship.
• Provide you with a flag flown over the U.S. Capitol.
• Congratulatory letters for birthdays anniversaries, retirements and more.
• Assistance requesting federal funding.

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Imagine that, for $31 a year, you could buy a membership that gave you access to all human knowledge, written or recorded. Story books for your children, story-telling presentations. Car manuals for your grease monkey. Tunes for your teenager. Cookbooks for your chef, movies for Saturday night, novels for the beach, how-to videos for your gardening, poems for quiet reflection. What a bargain, eh?

You can. $31 is the cost, per person, for America's public libraries, according to the American Library Association. For this small tax burden, Americans checked out over two billion items from public libraries last year, including an average of seven books as well as DVDs, tapes, and CDs.

Libraries have also become the de facto internet access point for those without a computer. In my hometown, the banks of PCs are routinely overbooked with retirees and immigrants staying in touch with loved ones. Many libraries also serve as a neighborhood gathering place for those between jobs, retired, or working from home. During a recent extended power outage, my local library also became the source of local information, electricity for recharging cell phones and laptops, and a place to congregate and share war stories.

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For my money, there is no institution that better illustrates democracy than the library. Our conviction that improving one person makes us all better, that knowledge shared will be returned in kind, that feeding the brain is as important as feeding the body, that a strong nation depends on a educated electorate, that the right to information guaranteed by the first amendment needs a vehicle for its delivery, is all manifest in the nation's library system. It is, in my opinion, worth its weight in gold.