Did you know that carrots weren't always orange? What!?!
The Dutch are known as the carrot farmers of the world and
some time around the 17th century- they cultivated carrots
for political and fashion purposes. Yes, carrots for politics and fashion.
Go figure! Carrots were originally purple, red, white and yellow.
The Dutch farmers were asked to cultivate red and white carrots
to make an orange carrot in honor of "William of Orange"
The people loved the new fashionable hue so much that
the farmers continued to cultivate the orange ones and the
purple, red, white and yellow carrots in a way became phased out.
Just like there are heirloom tomatoes, today the original
carrot colors are considered heirloom carrots.
There are five non-orange colored carrots.
The purple carrots are often a deep but bright purple on the outside
and the flesh on the inside is a yellow-ish orange color.
They are sweet in flavor.
The red ones are often a very bright red, they taste the same as
the orange carrots and are heavily filled with lycopene -
the known good for you antioxidant also found in tomatoes.
The white ones are either bright white or a creamy white.
They are pretty mild in flavor unlike their cousin the parsnip.
The yellow ones are sweet as well and have that pretty lemony color.
As I mentioned, these days the non-orange colored carrots are
considered heirloom carrots which kind of means old fashioned
in a way- to put it simply and they can be found in farmers markets
and often the organic section of the supermarket.
They are gorgeous in color.
Naturally sweet colored goodies direct from nature!
Bugs Bunny says -
"What's up doc", Let's Cultivate Food
