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.

Rugged Vegetables

Gladys Taber, my beloved late mother's favorite author, wrote in one of her books that she liked eating what she called "rugged vegetables":  cabbage, parsnips and carrots.  I'm with Gladys.  Even in the mid-winter, I crave those tasty farmer's market treats.  Our local health food store has organic cabbage and locally grown carrots, so I've been filling up on rugged vegetables at lunchtime lately.  Although not necessarily rugged, I also had pureed organic winter squash as my supper one recent evening when Larry was away.  Larry's not crazy about squash, so it was a special treat for me to make it my meal.  Such bright orange goodness!  With a couple of sprouted grain bread slices and a sprinkling of walnuts on top of the squash, I was in ecstasy!  An organic Pink Lady apple for dessert and the meal was complete!  With a belly full of rugged and not-so-rugged, good food, I'm ready for whatever our rugged winter sends our way.