Carrots

Carrots are a staple of your weekly shares. You will be getting them almost every week from early summer until the end of the season.

Cooking Tips

Carrots are one of the most versatile vegetables. They make a great raw snack just as they are, or you can try juicing them or grating them on top of a salad. If you are cooking them, try chopping them and sautéing them until they are tender, steaming them for about 10 minutes, or roasting them whole in the oven for about 30 minutes. They are also great in so many different soups and stews.

Storage Tips

Early in the season, your carrots will still have their green tops on. To store remove the tops. Run the roots under cold water to clean and store in a bag in your refrigerator for a couple of weeks in ideal conditions.

Nutrition

Carrots contain many vitamins and minerals, but are especially high in vitamin A and beta carotene, so they truly do help with night vision. Carrots are also known as nature's toothbrush and have the natural ability help clean teeth as they're eaten (as do apples, celery and other firm and crisp foods, so keep that in mind when you are without a toothbrush).

Field Notes

We seed our carrots directly into the soil, and grow several varieties of orange Nantes type carrots. These varieties are especially sweet, but the sweetness improves in the colder months as they develop more and more sugars.

History

Carrots, although not the beautiful orange we know today, were first grown some 5,000 years ago in what is now Afghanistan. Purple, white, yellow and red were the more common carrots colors, and they also had a more bitter taste. The vibrant orange color and sweet flavor of the carrot was not popularized until they reached Holland, where they were bred to be the color of the royal family.