From my days of watching early morning cartoons to the present day, I have loved carrots. My brother and I would munch along with Bugs Bunny every Saturday morning and I am sure my mom heard “What’s up Doc” more times than she could shake a stick at.
What is it about a carrot that makes it so inviting? For one it’s orange. Not boring white like the potato or faded green like the inside of those yucky zucchinis. Ewwww.
Carrots are bright and sweet and crunchy and delicious. And my friend, they are really fun to grow. The seeds come up fast and there is no waiting for it to ripen. If you have never pulled a carrot straight from the garden, wiped off the dirt and eaten it right there standing in the sun, you have not truly lived.
Carrot seeds are really small though and I thought they were hard to plant until I found this great invention, seed tape. I love carrot seed tape. What you spend on the tape saves you money on all the wasted seeds you drop in the dirt trying to sort them out. Less thinning too.
When they were younger, my kids liked to pull the carrots fresh from the garden and feed them to the horses. I would always remind them to hold their hands really flat so the horse didn’t think their little fingers were baby carrots! This usually caused some eye rolling and giggles but seriously who knows what a horse is thinking?
I don’t know what started the trend a few years ago of mixing shredded carrots with lime Jell-O to get us to enjoy this vegetable. Come on, green and orange don’t even go together in an outfit unless you want to look like a pumpkin.
And why would imitation lime flavoring be an added bonus to the delicious taste of a carrot?
Forgive me if this is a favorite salad of yours but what can I say? I just don’t find it appealing or tasty.
When I plant carrots now I like to try a couple of different kinds. Some are super sweet and I tried one last year that was a little spicy. This year I am going to try to grow a new short, round carrot that resembles the shape of a radish. These are supposedly good for people who have harder soil in their gardens where carrots can’t grow long and thin in the dirt.
I even found purple and white carrot seeds on the Internet that look fun. I know Bugs would shudder and probably say, “What the heck is up Doc”? if I were to hand him a purple carrot but it might look better in lime Jell-O. Then again, maybe not.
There are two rumors about carrots I feel I need to dispel. Baby carrots you buy in the store are truly not young, small, tender carrots. These “mini” carrots are cut and shaped into “baby” carrots from long fully-grown carrots. That’s why they don’t always taste sweet and fresh.
Rumor two, Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny was not allergic to carrots. He didn’t swallow them during recording sessions because chewing and eating the carrot took too much time.
And for all those children out there who doubt the wisdom of their mothers: a lady here in Annandale just told me her sister, who happens to live in Grand Marais, (Coincidence? I think not.) was feeding her horse when it bit off her finger and swallowed it!
I just knew fingers look like carrots! As my mom would say, “See I am not as dumb as I look.”
Don’t take life too seriously. You’ll never get out alive.
Bugs Bunny
Taste of Home columnist Sandy (Anderson) Holthaus lives on an alpaca farm in South Haven, MN with her husband, Michael, and their children Zoe, Jack and Ben. Her heart remains on the North Shore where she grew up with her parents, Art and LaVonne Anderson of Schroeder. She enjoys writing about her childhood and mixes memories with delicious helpings of home-style recipes.
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