Still pale but still trying

Marinated Carrot Salad
Food & Wine An Entire Year of Recipes 2004 Copyright 2004

Salt
1 pound carrots, thinly sliced on the diagonal or julienned
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil I used canola oil
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar or red wine vinegar I used red wine vinegar
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon minced shallot I used some yellow onion
1 tablespoon chopped parsley I used green onion
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon sugar
Freshly ground pepper

1. Bring a medium saucepan of water to a boil. Salt the water, then add the carrots and cook until they are barely tender, about 3 minutes (watch them - the cooking time with vary depending on the thickness); drain them.
2. In a large bowl, whisk the olive oil with the vinegar, garlic, lemon juice, shallot, parsley, mustard and sugar and season with salt and pepper. I whirled it all together in my mini-chopper. Add the carrots and toss to coat. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight. Serve the carrot salad chilled or at room temperature.
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As I continue my quest to give my complexion a healthy yellow glow, I turned to this recipe. So far my complexion is still the color of Wonder Bread and I was beginning to doubt if I could eat enough colorful vegetables to change it. After tasting this recipe I think it might be possible. I could easily down a pound of carrots a day eating this. I loved the dressing and since I'm not a big fan of raw carrots, that little bit of cooking made the difference. I had to make a few substitutions based on what I had on hand but they worked and I'll probably stick to my substitutions from now on.

I used a cheap mandolin-style, 'as seen on TV' vegetable slicer for this. I don't buy these products directly since I have plenty of opportunities to buy them at yard sales. I bought this brand-new, never-used, in-the-box for $1. It has several blades. I think it's worth what I paid. It actually did a nice job of slicing the carrots, although skinny carrots are not the easiest vegetable to slice on this type of slicer. You can't adjust the thickness of the slices as I would hope you could on a more expensive slicer but I happened to want these slices very thin and that's what I got. Now that I've taken the slicer out of the box and used it, I will probably use it a lot more. It wasn't difficult to use or clean. This is one of those things that I just don't need an expensive version of but I can get some use out of this cheap one.

I have to admit that I liked this so much I wanted to make another batch right away and I didn't feel like slicing another bag of carrots. Since I'm not sure if my food processor is working or not (it stopped working mid-recipe that last time I used it), I bought the bagged matchstick carrots and that worked out very well. They're a bit more expensive but a great time saver.