How can you tell it's winter in North Carolina?

I subscribe to a weekly online vegetable delivery service called Papa Spuds that packs a waxed box full of veggies and drops it off to your doorstep for the cost of a large pizza. Every week subscribers have the option of selecting from the available produce in the online menu, letting the delivery service provide the “default” delivery option, or putting the delivery on hold. You can go into your account and set your own defaults- if you want to eat healthy while contributing to global climate change for example, you can select “produce from Argentina and Peru”. My defaults are set for “local” and “organic”. I’m not interested in eating pesticide-covered strawberries or anything else from the dirty dozen, even if they are sold by a nice old lady in Johnson County, NC.

We’re fortunate enough in NC that we have access to abundant and varied local organic foods in all times of year except for, well, the season that passes for winter down here in North Carolina. One week in December I forgot to adjust my order, and found myself with a crisper full of 3 quarts of carrots, a large pile of beets, cabbage, and monster-sized sweet potatoes. So began what I called my Sunday carrotextravaganzas!

Carrot recipe #1- carrot-ginger-sweet potato soup, a lovely concoction of onion, carrot, and sweet potato sautéed in the bottom of one of my favorite pots, an NC State-red cast iron enameled dutch oven (purchased specifically for making Guinness stout pie on New Year’s Eve 2009). I gazed at the vegan soup with satisfaction after pureeing it and returning it to the pot, but then felt the pull of my French ancestry and finished it off with a pour of organic cream.

Carrot recipe #2- carrot cake. I’ve never baked a carrot cake before now. I’ve had difficulty understanding why somebody would put the time and effort into baking a cake that starred a vegetable. Just like I don't really understand how somebody thought to put zucchini in a sweet quick bread. But this carrot invasion called for extreme measures. I triangulated between 2 recipes- a Food and Wine site recipe that called for 2 cups of vegetable oil and one from a recipe that came with the delivery that called for 1.5 cups of oil. What would YOU do? Both called for raisins- needless to say I omitted them (why would anyone ruin a baked good with a shriveled black concentration of fructose?). The cake came out slightly fluffy, not dense and moist. The thick layers of cream cheese frosting saved it and my neighbors didn’t seem to mind one bit that the cake didn’t leave them with belly-aches. However, if you find yourself in this moral bind, I say go southern and fatten it up!

Carrot recipe #3- borscht. Beets are clearly the divas of this recipe, but it was really the perfect alignment of carrots, beets, and cabbage in my fridge that made this soup possible, as well as the free-range chicken stock I found at Trader Joe’s. I admit I tend to avoid cooking beets as my efforts leave my kitchen looking like an opening scene from {CSI, Bones, Law and Order- take your pick}. It all sounds so easy in the cookbooks, "the skins will slide easily off the cooled roasted beets with some gentle rubbing". During the massacre and much profanity, the rest of the mixture simmered. I started losing hope as the mixture of carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic, herbs and stock bubbled un-deliciously on my stovetop. Imagine my amazement at the transformation that occurred after adding the finely chopped roasted beets and the thin slices of cabbage. Served with a dollop of sour cream and toast, this borscht was easily one of the most delicious foods I’ve eaten this winter! Unlike most of my leftovers, I didn’t tire of it after 2 meals, and ate it for several days. The recipe I referred to came from Crescent Dragonwagon's Soup and Bread cookbook. I do recommend cutting the strips of cabbage short to keep one’s face from looking like they shaved with a dull razor though. Yes, the effort was worth the result. No, I will not be making borscht again this season.

The carrots are finally depleted. Now what to do with all the potatoes that have been piling up?