Sneaky Carrots

A Great Aunt of mine was visiting the first time I served Red Velvet Cake with Red Beets. She was so excited because she is a cafeteria cook for a public school in Iowa. She started telling me all the sneaky ways that she adds vegetables to the food that she prepares for the students. I was curious so she told me to get a cookbook called The Sneaky Chef. I did and I have incorporated some sneaky tactics into my cooking. It helped that my Grandad had a bumper crop of carrots. I got this many carrots 3 times...

Upon arrival at my house the carrots were dirty...

...so I dumped them in the metal washtub and scrubbed them...while talking on the phone...that made it more enjoyable...

 and then I peeled all of those carrots. It was a different evening and I happened to be talking on the phone again...to my mother-in-law...for an hour. I got a crick in my neck that evening! This is just some of the carrots I peeled that night.

 Then I cooked them until they were nice and soft.

 Then I put those soft carrots in the 1970's, well maybe 1980's, food processor that my mother-in-law unearthed from her basement. It was free and it has now been well used! This is a bowl of carrot puree.

 I froze it in one cup portions in freezer bags. This batch made 24 bags.

 What do I do with all of this carrot puree? I add it to every red sauce I use. In our house, so far, it has been served in spaghetti, ravioli, ziti, and pizza sauce. Pizza is a once a week occurrence here and I generally make pasta one other night in the week so about twice a week my kids eat carrots!

Instead of making this a mile long post I'll share my other sneaky experiments separately.