I am longish, and orangish. But I am not always straight, nor pointy, and sometimes I twist my way around rocks and roots, and come up entirely twisted.

Apparently, I am good for seeing things at night. But lest you spend the afternoon uprooting your neighbors vegetable garden in search of night vision, take note: I can only take you so far.

In this blog, I as The Carrot shall write about food issues from a food perspective. I will, for instance, rail against Stop & Shop, where I went this morning to buy a few last minute supplies for cooking demos at the food conference. I’ll bemoan that in Canaan, CT, it is easier to buy 50 lbs of oranges from Florida than 50 lbs of beets — which you can grow (and they do grow!) just up the road. I’ll talk about how out of place I felt in the wide aisles — with all the unfamiliar brand names, how I realized, why would anyone have to cook a THING when there are indeed 57 varieties of Heinz and other sauces available to douse my canned vegetables in? And also that there is such apparent abundance, the shelves thrusting forward, full of promise, I could have filled my cart with items that suggested themsevles skillfully onto my plate, that I didn’t even know I needed, or was hungry for. All this only in the pasta aisle.
I am The Carrot. I will tell you about the crunch of the salad, the soft smush of the roasted garlic and goat cheese in olive oil that was set out on each table at dinner tonight — so tasty — so fresh! I will celebrate the vegetables of our world, and the people who grow them and bring them to us, and the people who cook them and the people who eat them. I’ll write to you about all of the deliciousness in the world, in our food, in our relationships, that there is to enjoy — and the real ugliness that looms: agribusiness, oil-based agriculture, low-paid farmworkers, E. coli, and the struggle to stay human, and eat real food, in the midst of it all.

I am The Carrot — stay tuned!