Friday, March 25, 2011

Taste the Rainbow

I was first introduced to rainbow carrots by my good friend Alyssa. She is a food obsessed girl such as myself. Check out her blog Absolute Ambrosia for some fantastic recipes.

Anywho.

For our club Slow Food URI we decided to have a local foods thanksgiving dinner, complete with local donated vegetables and a turkey we "processed" ourselves from Pat's Pastured Poultry Farm in Jamestown, RI.

Along with Rhody Fresh milk and cream, Windmist Farm cider and eggs, Sonowski Farm potatoes, Watson Farm beef and Moonstone Garden buttercup squash were oodles of carrots courtesy of the URI Agronomy farm- and they were purple. I had never seen purple carrots before, so I was a bit shocked. Alyssa informed me that there are actually many varieties of carrots- some purple, violet or even a reddish color. These are heirloom breeds, and are usually not sold at your local Stop&Shop. These carrots are delicious. I concocted a vat of carrot soup with them of which went down very well at the  Thanksgiving Dinner. Valen was eating the leftovers for weeks and said he was glum when he ate his last bowl.




These carrots are hard to come by. The only other time I stumbled across them was through a roasted vegetable dish at Local 121, but they always have amazing local food.


So when I saw them at the farmer's market in North Kingstown, I grabbed a whole bunch. MmmmmM!




Aaaaaand you guessed it. I made carrot cake- one of my favorite, favorite, FAVORITE desserts. Whenever Valen and I are out to eat and carrot cake is on the dessert menu I can guarantee you we will be trying it. The mixture of nuts, carrots and spices in the cake create an intense flavor but the cream cheese frosting always helps it go down smooth. Along with olives and those really, really addicting sweet potato chip things, it is one of our top foods. Anyways, I am a huge fan.

-C

1 comment:

  1. Cate, I love this background.
    I was inspired by this post to put up something I have been procrastinating on so THANK YOU!

    ReplyDelete