Back when Karen and I were planning our garden extraordinaire, we were fairly specific about what we wanted. Carrots were something we wanted. We also realized that carrots were in a category all their own - a carrot being, well a carrot, only grows one at a time. This is opposed to the other stuff we are growing, like for instance peas, which get about a thousand peas per plant. Well not that many, but for sure more than one.
Because of this short-coming on the carrot's part, we decided that we needed a lot of carrots. Like 2 1/2 rows of carrots. 50 foot rows, which equals approximately 125 feet of carrots. We planted. We waited. We learned that carrot tops look a lot like weeds. We learned that we didn't plant our rows in a straight line. We learned our husbands would make fun of our not-entirely-straight-but-not-horrible-either lines. We learned that weeding around those little look-like-weeds baby carrots for 125 feet was not a lot of fun. We learned that thinning carrots feels a little like murder, otherwise known as carrotocide. We learned that we were pretty much the only ones in our families that felt that way. And then we learned to wait.
We waited all the way until this past Sunday. Sunday afternoon was the designated carrot-picking day. It was also to be carrot-washing day. Oh, and carrot-peeling day. And carrot-chopping day. And carrot-cooking day, carrot-bagging day and carrot-freezing day. It was going to be an all-around carrot kinda day.
Unfortunately, Karen worked until 3:00pm, so we didn't get started until 4ish. No sweat. I thought it would take about 20 minutes to pick our carrots - after all I'd picked one or two before and they just pulled right out of the ground. No problem. Except there WAS a problem. I started digging up carrots while Karen started digging up potatoes (the potatoes are a story for another day). I promptly snapped the first 10 and only pulled up the top part. I was getting increasingly LOUD advice from the potato-picker everytime she heard a "SNAP". Since it had just rained, the carrots were stuck solidly in the clay-soil. They required digging. A lot of digging. It took just slightly longer than 20 minutes. It might have taken 2 hours.
We hauled them inside the house and dumped them on the counter. Then we stood back and stared. This was slightly more than we had anticipated.
We (well, Karen) decided that we needed STATIONS. You know, like a carrot-washing station, a carrot-peeling station, a carrot-cutting station, a carrot-cooking station, a carrot-cooling station, and a carrot-bagging station. You may have been perceptive enough right there to realize that we had slightly more stations than people. About 7pm I put in an SOS call to RW:
ME: "HI! How ARE you?" [that's called the deflection strategy]
RW: "Fine, Babe. How's it going?" [still blissfully unsuspecting]
ME: "We are GREAT! Do you want to come over for Chinese food?" [that's called the slightly manipulative strategy]
RW: [perking up] "Chinese food??!"
ME: "YUP!" [And then in a quieter, yet confident voice] "canyoupicksomeupandcomeoverhereandhelpuswiththecarrots?"
RW: [slightly deflated, now catching on to the real reason of the call] "Really? You really need help with the carrots?" [oh I don't know- take a gander at this picture and tell me if we needed some help with the carrots..!]
But RW is a good sport and soon showed up to help with the carrots. It became an "all-hands-on-deck' operation. RW washed the carrots (and why didn't we think of the hose, like he did?) and then peeled, Karen and Nathan peeled, and I chopped and cooked. Karen was then in charge of the cooling and bagging stations.
We peeled, chopped, cooked and bagged right up until 10pm. And then we took our 1 quart freezer bags and weighed every last one. So here's the big question:
How many pounds of carrots did we end up with? In the interest of full disclosure, this was AFTER they had all been peeled (I think there was actually more peels than hard-wood on that floor) and AFTER we threw away the nasty ones. Leave a comment with your guess, and the person closest to the actual full weight will win a $25 gift card to Amazon. And if you were actually in that kitchen on Sunday, you can't enter the contest. Just so you know. If you were there, I won't be buying you a gift card.
And I'll leave you with one last tid-bit. Whilst explaining my orange hands to a co-worker two days later (umm, not kidding. They were ORANGE), she said:
Well-Meaning Co-Worker: "Well, at least you had a food-processer to chop the carrots! Can you even imagine chopping them by hand?" [tinkling laughter]
ME: "Food processer?"
Well-Meaning Co-Worker: "That's what you used, right? Who'd chop all that by hand?"
ME: "Me. I'd chop all that by hand. I DID chop all that by hand. CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP. That was me. By hand. CHOp CHOp."
Well-Meaning Co-Worker: "WHY didn't you use a FOOD PROCESSER?"
ME: "If I had thought of that, I most likely WOULD have used my food processer".
But since I didn't think about it, I'll just show you my orange hand. And pretend I didn't hear that little idea about the food processer two days too late.
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