Carrot Salads
Carrots always have their place in a fall, winter, or spring soup recipe. Most soups begin with a mirepoix - a combination of diced onion, carrots, and celery, gently cooked in butter or an oil. Roasted carrots are a staple vegetable side-dish during the cooler months when there are fewer vegetable options at the farmers market.
While I love eating roasted and sautéed carrots, I really love them raw and not just for snacking, but as a satisfying, grounding, sweet salad. As a root vegetable, carrots have more of the earth element than leafy greens, making them much more satiating. Energetically speaking, because of the way that they grow, underground, they are also more grounding for our minds.
Growing Carrots -
In Connecticut, we can start planting carrot seeds directly into the soil as early as March 15th. As with most vegetables, succession planting is also great for carrots. In late June, we start enjoying the ones we’ve planted in March. Planting in July, will provide you with carrots into the winter. And, they actually get sweeter as the temperature drops because the carrot converts stored starches into sugars to protect itself against frost.
Carrot seeds are very small and not the easiest to plant by hand. But, if you treat it like a meditation practice, you’ll feel very Zen-like post-carrot planting! Personally, I prefer to space them 3/4-2 inches apart while planting rather than having to go back and thin them to this distance apart.
Varieties such as Rubypak are wonderful to plant along with Bolero or Narvik from Johnny’s Seeds. The red color of Rubypak combined with the typical bright orange carrot, make your salad look even more amazing!
Below are a couple of my favorites recipes.
