Strange Carrots...

So I was going to write about an amazing eclair I had today... and then I had dinner. We had stir-fry with tofu, kale, broccoli, and pea-pods steamed with ginger and vegetable broth, and smothered with Trader Joe's General Tso's Sauce. Delish and perfectly commonplace in my house except for one thing- the carrots. They were purple with orange centers. Ok... not commonplace AT ALL.

Backstory: we get most of our vegetables from South Mountain Veggies, which is basically a home delivery service that brings the fruits and veggies right to your door every week. They are organic and as local as possible. The catch: they choose what goes in the box every week, so you can end up with some unique stuff that you may need to look up online... hence the carrots.

When my mom first saw the carrots, she was like "Skinny beets? Carrot/ beet hybrids? Small rutabagas?", so she consulted the email list of what we were getting. Turns out they were carrots. When she cut them open, they were bright orange on the inside with a purple skin. "Hmmm... ok, they taste fine. Let's put them in the stir-fry and see what the kids think!" We were a bit surprised. I thought they were beets at first. When I tasted them, they were sweeter than normal carrots with a little sharpness. They really do taste like a carrot-beet hybrid.

We got a bit curious, so we decided to look up heirloom carrots online. We came up with dragon carrots- an heirloom carrot with a purple skin and orange inside. They're amazing to eat and beautiful to look at. Since they came in the box, they're local. Maybe they're going to start showing up at farmers markets... I hope so!

Here's a picture of them. They're not ours, my picture wouldn't upload. Credit: http://oldvegiepatch1972.googlepages.com/carrot.html