What's Up Doc? (recipe)

I love carrots. Heck, I'll eat just about any kind of crunchy vegetable, but carrots could replace candy forever as far as I'm concerned. There's an urban legend that if you eat too many carrots your skin will start to turn orange. Yeah, that one's true. How do I know? It happened to me. I used to buy the one pound bags of pre-cut baby carrots by the cart full. They were my snack of choice. At one point, I was going through eight ounces or more each day. One afternoon, I looked at my palms and they were literally carrot orange. NO LIE! [Insert Oompa Loompa joke here.] After that I started traveling with more variety and cutting back on my carrot intake. Still I love them and, thankfully, it's one vegetable that appeals to everyone in this house.

The kids love Daddy's candied carrots. I don't know where his version came from. It's probably one of those that have been handed down through the years. My own mother makes a killer glazed carrot recipe, but that came from a cookbook, so it's proprietary. I took the elements of flavor that I liked best about the two of them and created my own. (Don't tell Dad. He thinks I do it the way he does.)

My Favorite Candied Carrots

Warning: This recipe is SO not low fat.

1 lb carrots, washed, peeled, sliced, cooked, and drained

3 Tbsp butter

2 Tbsp brown sugar

1/4 tsp onion powder

If you boiled or steamed your carrots on top of the stove, just use the same pan. If not, pull out a 2 quart saucepan and melt the butter in it over medium low heat.

Add brown sugar and onion powder and stir until the sugar is melted and incorporated into the butter.

Add carrots and toss to coat them in the glaze. If they've cooled, let them remain in the pan on low heat stirring gently until they come back to temp.

A few notes:

Quite frankly, I prefer to buy the frozen baby carrots and boil them because it's quick and easy, but they retain more nutrients if you steam them either from fresh or frozen. Mom always used fresh and sliced them into disks.

It's okay to use the canned carrots, just heat them before you add them to the glaze. You'll want two regular sized cans.

Please do not brown your butter. Heat it just long enough to get it melted then get your remaining ingredients into the pan. Watch out because the whole glaze only takes about three minutes.

What to do with the leftovers:

These reheat pretty well, so you could just reheat them in the microwave and leave it at that.

BUT you could also reheat them and serve them on a bed of plain rice or rice pilaf with some sauteed sliced chicken or beef.