Roasted Carrots

Carrots have always been one of my favorite foods.  I think the real reason is that the first time I was really aware of carrots as a young child was when Uncle Lewie was in the service and needed to improve his night vision so he was instructed to eat lots of carrots.  Ever since then I have had a love affair with carrots.

Most recently I have loved roasted carrots.

Roasted Carrots

Wash and cut into sticks a couple of pounds of carrots.  Dry them well and place in a large bowl.  Drizzle with olive oil...perhaps 2 to 3 Tablespoons but no more than 3 Tablespoons.  With your clean hands, lift and turn and mix well until every carrot stick is coated with the oil.  If there is oil in the bottom of the bowl you have used too much oil.  Use less next time.

Sprinkle with 1 teaspoon of coarse Kosher salt and about the same amount of crushed black pepper.  Stir with a spoon this time unless you want to lick the salt and oil off your fingers!

Place in a large rimmed pan such as a half-sheet pan and spread out one layer thick.  It is somewhat important that each carrot touch the surface of the pan.  Tightly cover pan with aluminum foil. Let roast in a 400 degree F. oven for about 15 minutes.  Remove from oven and remove the foil from pan.  Turn carrots over and return pan to oven to cook an additional 10-15 minutes.  Watch them closely after the 10 minutes.  You want them to brown but not burn.

These are delicious right out of the oven.  They are also great at room temperature.

Uncle E's Cannon

Long ago when I was a teenager, my brother E was also a teenager.  He was also very very creative!  In shop class in our high school he made a cannon.  Don't ask me how he did it or why the shop teacher allowed such a project, but he did do it.

One glorious summer day soon after he had made the cannon, the rest of us kids were lying on our backs on the lawn under the big maple tree up near the large rhubarb patch watching the gorgeous puffy white clouds floating by in the bright blue sky trying to identify their shapes...a camel there, that one was definitely the neighbor's nose.   From our spot on the cushy grass we could look out over the valley past the end of our  big white farm house.

E decided this would be the day to use the cannon for the first time.  I was totally oblivious to what he was doing (oblivion being one of my less attractive character traits developed from an early age....).  By the time he was set up and ready to go,  I had become aware. 

There he was, small cannon set up on that lush green grass and pointed toward the valley, and BOOM!!  Off went whatever he had used to prime the cannon.  What a fabulous success it seemed.  For a moment.  Almost immediately we realized that he had hit the telephone pole just past the house!  Yikes!  Being kids, it didn't seem like much of a problem until we went into the house to find we had no telephone service...

Kids will do the darnedest things.  Sometimes they are successful, but with unpleasant results. 

To my knowledge, the cannon was never fired again.