Tuesday was beets n carrots day.
Our carrots didn’t grow worth a darn this year. We have a couple we can pull out by onesies and twosies for soups and whatnot, but not enough to make it worth our while to do a big preserving day.
Aunt Dude, however, grew a tone of carrots in her garden, which have been sitting in plastic bags in our refrigerator for a couple weeks because, well… busy.
So last Tuesday, we pulled the last of the beets from our garden, and peeled and blanched them. Then Ellie and Daddy peeled and chopped all the carrots.
Ellie loves running the vacuum sealer.
She taught the two younger ones how to load up the vacuum bags with beets, first.
We decided to try using the apple dicer on the carrots. It works very well on apples or small potatoes, but it is tough to use on carrots. Ellie’s whole body weight was not sufficient to force it down.
Fortunately Daddy has an extra pound or two to throw at it.
Even Daddy had to work for it on some of those bad boys.
So after we figured that out, Ellie cut them into lengths short enough for the dicer, and Daddy diced them. We worked through the whole pile of carrots in about 15 minutes in this way.
Then Daddy blanched them while the kids put them in bags and vacuum sealed them.
8 bags of carrots and two bags of beets. Where was Evie during all this?
In the other room, working on her school.
Ellie was sad to learn that supper was duck soup with fresh garden vegetables.
She volunteered to eat the whole bowl of mashed squash by herself instead of the soup.
But no. She was required to eat her bowl of soup first, as always. It builds character.
