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Up front you should know that I am not a Dr or Nutritionist, so you should seek medical advice from a trained professional before making any changes to your diet.
There are a variety of carrots, they’re not all orange! The earliest records of carrots date back to 3000 BC, in Iran & Afghanistan.
They started out white, but once they were traded and became popular, crossbreeding paved the way to different colors of carrots.
One cup of carrots contains roughly:
- Vitamin E: 1.33mg
- Vitamin K 12.86μg
- Potassium: 495mg
Carrots are quite nutritious as you can see. Let’s talk about the health benefits you might get with adding more carrots into your diet.
Health benefits of eating Carrots!
Eye Health
The benefit you’ve probably heard about a lot growing up is that carrots are good for your eye’s. Well, that is true to a point. They will not reverse any kind of existing eye conditions but they can help prevent them or at least delay the onset.
Since carrots contain Vitamin A and Beta-Carotenes and your eye’s need both of these to stay healthy.
Reducing Cancer Risks
Diets high in Carotenoids might lower your risks of Colon, Prostate and Stomach cancers
Lower your Cholesterol
Since Fruits and Vegetables don’t contain any cholesterol, intaking more plant food will help in lowering your chances for heart disease
Growing Carrots!
So as you may know by now, I ended up planting carrots again this year. I decided to grow them in containers. At first I tried to plant a row of carrots in my garden, but the following week, we ended up getting a lot of rain and not much of anything made it.
That is why I went ahead and did the containers again for the carrots.
Carrots do need to have loose sandy soil. If there are rocks or hard object’s this can cause the carrots to grow funny.
They do take a while to grow as well. Last year when we lived in Ohio, I thought the carrots were getting pretty big because the green tops were tall and wide, so I decided to pull one and see how big they were… they were not big, not even close haha.
Carrots take about 70-80 days until they are ready to pull. Usually you’ll start seeing the tops of the carrots pop up out of the soil when they’re ready to harvest.
The nice thing about Carrots is that you don’t need a lot of space to grow carrots, You don’t want to overload an area but I usually plant the seeds about 2″ apart.
Storing Carrots
I have had carrots in a bag last almost a month in the fridge, these were organic carrots as well. I don’t suggest letting them sit that long and not be used, but longer than that they start going bad.
What I do is freeze the carrots. This seems to be the most cost effective way and it saves space.
You will need to blanch them though. I usually chop them in 1″ lengths and chop them into coins.
Blanching the carrots take a little bit of time but it’s well worth it. Boil them for about 5 minutes, then put them in ice water for the same amount of time.
Then just pat them dry and stick them in a bag. I will measure out a cup of carrots per freezer bag. I have been paying more attention to my calorie intake so I am more conscious about portions. But you can put how ever much you want to per bag.
You can also can carrots, but I have no experience with this. You can find more about canning carrots if you pick up a canning book.
Cooking with Carrots
I like to put them in a breakfast scramble with some bell peppers and onions. maybe some broccoli, beans and rice.
You can also make your own cheese with carrots, cauliflower, cashews, your favorite plant milk, nutritional yeast and some spices of your choice, then blend it all up.
If you like a bit of kick to your cheese, you can add a can of rotel or jalapeños.
You can put the cheese in macaroni, top some nachos with it, drizzle it on your burritos or whatever else you like to do with cheese.
One thing I would do as a kid, when we had a juicer was drink a lot of carrot juice. Juicing can be a bit pricey but healthy.
Dipping carrots into peanut butter is also delicious.