Purple Carrots!!

I wrote about these a long time ago, but since then I've learned a lot more about them so I thought I'd re-share... besides, they're really interesting to me :)

I hadn't seen (or heard) of purple carrots until we arrived here in South Asia. I remember learning the word for Carrot and then going to the veggie seller guy to ask for carrots. When I asked him, he pointed to some red carrot-looking things and some purple carrot-looking things. I thought he didn't understand my Hindi, so I repeated the word but got the same response. So, I decided to try the purple carrots.

I read up a little on them (there's not much out there), but aparently they originated in the Middle East around Afghanistan and then made their way over to South Asia. I also read that carrots used to be very thin, red, purple and black - and terribly bitter. The orange color didn't appear until the 16th century when enterprising Dutch growers used a mutated yellow carrot seed from North Africa to create a carrot in the Dutch Royal Family's official color - orange. I thought that was interesting :)Anyway, they tasted almost the same as a regular carrot. If it was a blind taste-test I probably wouldn't have noticed. BUT one thing I did notice was how they make great dyes... my cutting board and hands turned a light shade of purple - as well as my teeth and tongue! :)
Anyway, thought I'd share (I don't have much to share right now since I'm not out so much... I only have 1.5 weeks left in the 1st trimester, so hopefully I'll get out more :))...