Did you know that Queen Anne's Lace is said to have been named after Queen Anne of England, who was an expert lace maker. The story goes that she pricked her finger on the blossom, a single drop of blood fell onto the lace, leaving the dark purple floret, that is found on the flower's center.
Driving on very dusty, rural roads, when I happen to see Queen Anne's Lace gracefully dancing along the side of the road, I pull over, cut bouquets of this favorite delicate flower. Hmmmm many think of it as a weed. I beg to differ. More recently
I ran across an article claiming that Queen Anne's Lace is related to the carrot.
I like to imagine, if I had plucked out the roots along with the flower and its stem, I would have found a plump carrot dangling from its end!
In our smallish town of Matthews, we have a great Saturday Market. Loads of fun stuff: French pastries to pottery; starter plants to bouquets of fresh cut flowers in Mason jars half filled with water; every day, ordinary veggies, to the "exotic" varieties.
The Matthew's Market is where I saw my first colorful, rainbow hued carrots. I was quite smitten.
Not too concerned as to how they would taste, I was eager to whisk them off to take photos.
Spending several days photographing, the poor things grew quite limp and soft.
I was quite curious about carrots that looked like they had tumbled from a rainbow, must taste!
Due to the hours of photography, the carrots became a bit pale and limp! Nevertheless, I scrubbed them and cut some up for tasting. Yuck! first bites, I wasn't immediately sure what I thought. They didn't taste ORANGE. They were.......Well, I decided I better buy fresh ones before I came to any hasty conclusions.
I decided to brush up on the history of today's "modern" carrot...you know, as in, Carrot-Genealogy? I headed for Google: I quickly learned that these colorful carrots are NOW officially known as
Heirloom Carrots.
Further rummaging around Google, I discovered the WORLD CARROT MUSEUM.
You got to be kidding, a real museum....dedicated to carrots. Who knew?
Pretty interesting where a bit of curiosity and reading can take you. Soon I had a new found respect for carrots of all stripes, colors and sizes, limp or not.
The Carrot Museum is located in
the UK, but a smaller museum, just for fun, in Belgium.
the UK, but a smaller museum, just for fun, in Belgium.
If you are really curious about the emergence of ORANGE carrots, well any color carrot,
Just to give you a heads up, the article is quiet interesting and colorful but it is also LONG and detailed.
Grab a few facts, invite guests to dinner, prepare carrot soup and carrot-nut-raisin muffins and casually insert a bit of genealogy to impress your guests.
Hey you might even entertain writing a cookbook...
Carrots One Thousand Ways or Less.
Carrots One Thousand Ways or Less.
