bryant terry’s glazed carrot salad, from his ‘afro-vegan’ cookbook

Carson Downing. Food Styling: Kelsey Moylan

Amy Batog

I hope my carrots will taste better than the pottery gnome variety. Gonsenheimer have not been grown in my garden before but as they are promoted as crack resistant I thought I would give them a go. The blurb says ‘a bunching variety producing heavy crops of smooth skinned, good flavoures bright orange roots.’  Just about what you need from a packet of Carrot seed. Sown now they can be harvested from end July until December.

Vitamin D from sun to plate via well grown Carrots

Carrots are not always orange and can also be found in purple, white, red or yellow. Carrots were the first vegetable to be canned commercially. Choose well-shaped, smooth, firm, crisp carrots with deep color and fresh, green tops. Carrots are fat free, saturated fat free, low sodium, and cholesterol free.

I SAID IT WHEN I first saw this doodle by Andre Jordan: It’s as if the refrain of “Reunited” (circa 1980 by Peaches & Herb) came face to face with that “You complete me” one-liner from “Jerry McGuire.” Two halves of the same whole–but which in this case is whose better half?

I first met Deb Perelman in my former life, when I worked for Martha Stewart. It was late 2007 or early 2008—a millennium ago in internet years—and we’d invited in a group of bloggers we admired to get better acquainted.  Deb sat to my left (and beyond her was Heidi Swanson of 101Cookbooks.com, with the founders of Apartment Therapy and theKitchn.com across the table, and more). I think that gathering is what crystallized my intention to start a website: such an inspiring group.But I digress. If you haven’t visited Smitten Kitchen, prepare to be entertained, educated, and called to action.DEB PERELMAN is a self-taught home cook, and is funny in that self-deprecating way I love (often using the cross-out strikethrough key on her editing dashboard to good effect). On the blog, and in the new cookbook, Deb invites you into her kitchen, and family, teaching you (her Tips section online alone is worth a visit, let alone all her recipes) while tempting you. You always come away hungry…until you get out the ingredients

To enter to win a copy, simply scroll down to the comments and tell us how you like your spears. Type a whole recipe right into the comment box, or just a link to a recipe on your blog or another’s, or perhaps a tip instead about what you like asparagus served with (Anna says dill and lemon come to mind, for starters).The backstory: I met Anna Thomas when “Love Soup” came out last fall, and promptly stocked my freezer with double batches of several of her recipes made from my winter squash and sweet potatoes and kale and the like, and stocked up on copies to give as holiday gifts. Now a whole new season of homegrown vegetables has begun, and I’m working my way through “Chapter 9: First Tastes of Spring,” and on to “Chapter 10: Green and Greener.” Heaven. Vats of Asparagus Bisque, here I come.Thismust-have cookbook features 160 vegetarian recipes for soups and all the extras, from b

APPARENTLY MANDATORY DRUG-TESTING will now be required in the arenas of the county fair and harvest festival, where our able correspondent Andre Jordan reports that the use of performance-enhancing substances is growing as rampant as crabgrass. I wonder if the rotten carrot is being held in the crisper–or the clinker–awaiting trial? Doubtful that the drug-dependent root was a match for the world-record holder, at 19 feet 1.96 inches–I kid you not.

MELISSA CLARK IS ONE OF US. The prolific cookbook author and “The New York Times” food columnist has a homegrown Dahlia (her young daughter); knows a rutabaga from a turnip (so many people don’t!), and is intrepid in harvesting year-round farm-and-garden gleanings—if not in her own backyard, then in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza Farmers’ Market, where she has been a year-round customer for years, come hell or ice age. With her latest, “Cook This Now,” the hard part will be figuring out which of 120 recipes to start with. Win one of two copies I’ve bought to share—and get her recipe for Carroty Mac and Cheese right now.

John, whose dramatic and delicious purple ‘Dragon’ carrot is bright orange inside, was reassuring as ever. First, don’t feel bad, he said. “Carrots are one of the harder vegetables to grow,” confirms John (with flowering carrots in an OSA photo, above), and for a few reasons:They’re such small plants when they first sprout (the seed isn’t too big, either; I like to use pelleted, shown below, and there are now pelleted ones that meet organic certification requirements).To get really good quality you need “unchecked growth”—no obstacles either literal (like rocky or otherwise tough soil) or meteorological (extremes of heat, cold or especially dryness). “Succulence and flavor wi

Anyone who has hosted a meal in recent years—whether a big holiday gathering for extended family or a casual summer supper al fresco for friends—has faced the moment of reckoning, or even panic, when various guests reveal their dietary restrictions or philosophies. One’s a vegan. Another has food allergies. Another doesn’t consider it dinner without a major piece of meat in the center of the plate.No problem, if you stop planning around these negatives and look for common ground, Anna Thomas explains. Anna is author of the 1973 million-seller cookbook “The Vegetarian Epicure,” and also of “Love Soup” in 2009—one of my most-used cookbooks ever, and which won a James Beard Award, so I’m not