Carrots, carrots and more carrots.......

Yesterday the kitchen was turned into a carrot preparation zone. Whilst tidying and weeding the polytunnel over the weekend I pulled up the last of the carrots, the greenery had wilted due to all the frost, but the carrots below the soil were in brilliant condition.

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I ended up with a huge box full of all sizes and shapes, so I decided to do as much as I could to preserve them. There were also a few parsnips left so these were pulled up too and with a few of the teeniest carrots I made some Curried Parsnip and Carrot Soup....truly yummy, after an ongoing tasting session by Lovely Hubby who had spoonful after spoonful 'for quality control purposes' the rest was cooled and put into the fridge for lunches this week.

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Then I chose some of the larger carrots and halved, then blanched them to go into the freezer for future use. The medium sized carrots were put into a pan for tea and we had Herby Buttered Carrots with our chicken and rice last night, and finally the weirdly shaped ones were dropped into the blanching water (why waste vitamins by pouring it down the drain) with some potatoes, onions and celery to make a nice vegetable soup.

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This I put into the bottom oven of the Aga and promptly forgot all about, hence the darkness of the broth in the pan in the picture above. The drawback to an Aga is that NO cooking smells escape (inside the house anyway) so you do tend to forget about things if you are cooking late at night and they are tucked away in the depths of the oven!

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This morning it was fished out of the oven at 5.30 am by LH before he left for work and now I can't decide, is it rich and delicious or just over-cooked, I think I will have to liquidise it and then get my 'quality control expert' back on the job!

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Sue xx