Week 49 - Roasting

I could have used Week 49's roasting challenge as an opportunity to finally roast a whole bird or something, but I really wasn't in the mood for that. Instead, I decided to roast some carrots. It was definitely not the first time I had roasted carrots, but it was a great excuse to buy the carrots of many colors that I've repeatedly eyed at Trader Joe's.

Carrots, until the Dutch got to them, weren't uniformly orange like they are in today's grocery stores. But what I didn't know, and wanted to test, was whether the carrots of different colors tasted any different. A tried each one raw, and then we both tried them roasted, but our conclusion was that they don't actually taste any different. They all just tasted like carrots. The multiple colors were pretty though.

Each bag of the carrots at Trader Joe's has a couple pounds of carrots in a multitude of colors. I thought there were only 3 colors - white, purple (although I guess TJ's calls that red), and orange - but I was wrong, as you can see from that little yellow carrot that snuck in. We ended up with 6 white, 6 purple, 6 orange, and 1 yellow. Pretty balanced selection (other than the yellow). I was a bit obsessed with the purple carrots. The reddish purple hue was gorgeous, their insides were surprisingly yellow, and I was just so fascinated by every aspect of them.

To roast the carrots, I just chopped them up, coated them in olive oil, salt, and pepper, and put them in the oven for about 40 minutes (stirring halfway through) in a 400 degree oven. I like my roasted carrots to be on the softer side, because I think it really lets the sweetness of the carrots out. We ate them with some scrambled eggs (well, Egg Beaters that were passed on to us at Thanksgiving that we had to use up) and leftover power greens. It was a very healthy dinner.

The roasted carrots tasted good, but they tasted just like any other roasted carrots. I wouldn't be opposed to buying them again, but the price per pound is higher than the regular orange carrots, so I don't know if I really need to regularly pay extra for the novelty of the colored carrots. (It's $2.49 for 2 lbs of multicolored carrots, and $0.89 for each 1 lb (I think, never bought before) bag of regular carrots.) Every so often, maybe. I really do kind of love those pretty purple carrots.