Orange is the new purple. Or at least when it comes to carrots. I bought these beauties from the Black Dirt Region (spanning southern Orange County, NY to northern Sussex County, NJ) after a friend and I decided those convenient bags of machine-cut carrots had more in common with large pencil stubs than they did with vegetables. The funny thing is that purple carrots are actually the authentic carrot color (along with white), but Dutch growers decided in the 16th century to breed to orange.  Purple carrots are more nutritious, with 28 times the amount of antioxidants, according to the Carrot Museum website  and they also color coordinate well with my winking Blue Eyes granite countertop. They're quite amusing to scrape and hilarious to mash. Hey, do you think they grow better in Purple Rain?