Carrots in the Apple Crisp

A couple of years ago someone got this fancy idea and started a new enterprise right here in our little town. They moved into one of those empty fruit warehouses and started cutting up local fruit and packaging them up for sale.

Insanity, really. Who can't slice their own pear? But this company is making a killing. It's good for the town, of course.

They soon took over the warehouse across the road as well and it wasn't long they bought out the next building which was a newer office type building.

Semi trucks full of whole fruit coming in and semi trucks of sliced fruit shipping out clog the roads.

Eventually, they bought out the trailer court and everyone was moved out and the mobile homes were destroyed or dragged away. The displaced people were moved to the larger town and are now bused in, along with their children in to work for the company or attend their old neighborhood school.

Last summer they purchased all the land adjacent to their other properties - this was the old sawmill long since burned to the ground. Ever since the road has been closed as they revised that whole area for the booming business. They said the road would be open in October, but here we are into March and that road is still closed to thru traffic.

When I need compost for my garden I hitch the trailer to the suburban and pull into the warehouse parking. A forklift drops a bin or two of cores at a time onto my trailer for free. I return later with the empty bins.

The business is branching out into other products... party trays, lunch kit, etc.. with other fruit, even pineapple from Hawaii, etc... Several of the Hispanic community that attend our church work at this company. I don't know what the deal is, but suddenly they had too many pretzels and baby carrots. Boxes and boxes of the pretzels were given to the workers. Huge boxes. Like 25 lb boxes. Boxes and boxes of bagged carrots.... We happen to be recipients of the excess.

I'm a little pretzeled out and I have used the baby carrots in as many ways as I can think of, but tonight Bri topped them all!  When I went to scoop myself a bowl of apple crisp tonight... there were carrots mixed in the apples. My objection was only exceeded by Steve's shock and horror. "What????! I just ate a half a bag of those carrots on the way home. I don't need anymore carrots."

Apparently Natalie was eating apple crisp with some sort of winter squash mixed in at college today and she convinced Brianna that it was really good. If squash is good that way, why not carrots?

Ah, but doesn't everybody know that apples and carrots don't go together? You can't even store them in the same refrigerator without them waging war on each other and destroying the flavor.

But that's how we get carrots in the apple crisp. : ~/

Oh, and seeing we are a large family.... everything is cooked in restaurant deck pans. You all  up to trying carrot apple crisp?