early macs and big carrots
There are apples, now, which sure makes it feel like fall. Just the thing to get me in the mood for getting back to work with those school children, which I will be doing a week from today. There are also carrots; well, there have been for some time, but now they are present in a quantity that demands to be dealt with seriously. So for dinner I combined these two fresh local ingredients in two ways, just like a half-assed episode of Iron Chef. Apple and carrot salad, and apple and carrot muffins. That's all I got. Awful tasty, though!
Besides being plentiful, the carrots we're growing are also, some of them, very large indeed. Not long; the two varieties I planted, "Little Finger" and "Danvers Half Long", are both bred to top out at six to eight inches, which I thought would be prudent in my uncertain soil. They make up for their lack of length, though, by expanding to a considerable girth, as you may see from the following picture.
That's my normal-sized hand there, too, not some midget hand! The only problem with carrots of this magnitude is, they are nearly triangular in shape, and as such very difficult to cut into traditional carrot sticks or coins. It's worth it, though, because each one can feed a family of four for a week.