Not a winsome one in the bunch! These four contestants are all hairy, two with strange knobby projectiles, one oddly twisted and the last with a forked tongue. If the criteria for carrots was strictly visual, these would be passed over without much deliberation. But the old adage that "beauty is only skin deep" rings true here with much certainty. These carrots 'sho nuff may be ugly, but they win the taste competition hands down.
As a matter of fact, the science of food production that makes our fruits and vegetables uniformly pretty and keeps them pretty longer has had the complete inverse impact on flavor. The subjects above have had an intimate relationship with dirt, and they look like it. At the same time, they have absorbed all the tasty nutrients from the soil and have an unparalleled natural sweetness. Any chance you get to eat an ugly carrot, I'd say take full advantage.
This year an abundance of ugly carrots has made its way to my kitchen. As a member of Bee Natural CSA, the one thing we have had EVERY week is carrots. The first couple of weeks as I picked up my share, the carrots began to snowball. I had more each week than I could possibly assimilate into my meals. But then I began to get innovative. Grated carrots gave additional sweetness to my homemade marinara. I cut carrot sticks every week and put them in a plastic container so we could snack on them all day long and eat them instead of chips with our sandwiches. I discovered the delicate simplicity of roasted carrots, cut into chunks and tossed in olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper and cooked in a hot oven until slightly browned and caramelized. And then I did a Google search for carrot muffins and struck pure gold. What I found was a recipe for zucchini bread with a sidebar noting that grated carrots can be substituted for zucchini. With my abundance of carrots, I could certainly experiment. The other grabber in this recipe was that the sweetness came from honey instead of sugar. Honey is another CSA bonanza with monthly distributions. A touch of cinnamon and nutmeg will make your house smell like heaven while you are baking, and the whole wheat flour alleviates any guilt while scarfing down a piece or two. A little slather of butter doesn't hurt things a bit, and my sister declares a little cream cheese makes it a winner at breakfast.
My own musing here makes me wonder if we are kind of like carrots. If we concentrate too much on our outer selves--what we wear, how we look, what we possess--is there some sacrifice on the inside? Perhaps we are at our God-created best when we focus on inner authenticity. I just can't help but wonder.
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| Ugly Carrots, Local Honey and Farm Eggs |
WHOLE WHEAT CARROT OR ZUCCHINI BREAD
1-1/2 cups carrots or zucchini, grated
1/2 cup oil or 1/2 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup honey or 1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs beaten
1 tsp. vanilla
1-1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp. baking soada
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1-1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 cup nuts, chopped
1/2 cup raisins (optional)
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Beat together oil and honey. (I use grape seed oil.)
3. Add eggs, vanilla and carrots.
4. Sift dry ingredients and add to carrot mixture.
5. Add the nuts last.
6. Bake in a greased 9" loaf pann for 45-60 minutes. Note: I use an oven thermometer to check the oven temperature when baking, and even so, I have had great variability in the baking time of this bread. I think it may have to do with the size of the eggs. I start checking it at about 35 minutes with a cake tester. You want the tester to come out dry, but you don't want the bread to get too brown or it will be TOO dry.
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