Carrot Heritage

While munching on a delicious, frost-sweetened carrot from the farmer's market recently, I thought of how I have been enjoying carrots with my lunch since I was a little girl.  I really love carrots, especially when they're served raw.  As a grade school-age child, I was such a fussy eater that my mom finally gave up trying to make me eat hot lunch and, instead, bought me cute lunch boxes each year to place my half of a peanut butter sandwich, celery and carrot sticks, and fruit.  Try hard as I did to like the meals prepared at school (and I'm sure, now with an adult's perspective, that they were delicious and nutritious), I just couldn't make myself eat them without losing my appetite, so after a discussion between my teacher and my frustrated mother, Mom gave in and packed my lunch with healthy foods that she knew would appeal to me.  If I was really good, I got to have a smear of cheese spread in the curved crevice of the celery sticks.  It's funny how munching on a carrot recently brought back a flood of memories of school lunches from long ago and how carrots are still one of my favorite foods.