Carrot // vegetable

🌱🥕🤔Did you know why fresh carrots tend to turn from crunchy to rubbery? Limp-wilted carrots are just dehydrated, so no waste them! Grandma Sita has an easy kitchen hack to revive them: submerge carrots in cool water in a container, and place it in the refrigerator for a few hours (or even overnight), then carrots are rooting for you!

💪 Carrot roots are an important source of dietary carotenes and contribute to our vitamin A needs. Root vegetables contain beneficial vitamins and health-promoting compounds such as antioxidants. Know your roots and enjoy an autumn season full of yummy plant-based meals.

👩‍🍳Carrots are among the most popular root vegetables because this incredibly versatile root will never bore you. They can be roasted, boiled, steamed, or pickled, although they are most often used raw as a snack or tasty salad. In addition, carrots are great cooked in soups, stews and sides, curries, hummus, smoothies, juices, and sweet bakes like Grandma Sita’s delicious plant-based carrot cake!  

👵💚 Grandma Sita’s tips:
*All carrots should be stored in an airtight container in the vegetable drawer of your fridge, no matter if they’re whole, peeled, unpeeled, or cut. But for longer-term storage freezing carrots is a far better option. Remember fresh or frozen, fruit and vegetables that don’t have any added ingredients are healthy choices.
*Most vegetables need to be blanched before being freeze-dried. This step of briefly boiling vegetables helps prevent changes to colour, texture, and flavour caused by enzymes during long-term storage.
*Carrot greens are a great replacement for herbs in traditional sauces like pesto or chimichurri and even sautéed with garlic and red pepper as a delicious side dish.

📗 Although most of us associate carrots with their bright orange colour, carrots were originally purple or white with a thin, forked root, over time they became a yellow colour. After centuries of domestication, farmers could change into the large, tasty orange roots we know today.

♻️ There is no need to peel carrots before eating raw, the skin is a potent source of healthy nutrients. However, since carrots are grown in the ground, washing/scrubbing is important. Be aware that carrot skins can turn bitter and dry when cooked, but you can use them in vegetable stock, make chips, or compost them. All of us can act at home to reduce our waste and every single one counts!

🌎 Eating local and seasonal fruits and vegetables helps to reduce food waste, saves resources, improves food quality and healthy habits, and boosts the local economy.