Roots

As my family and our guests gather around our Thanksgiving table today, the menu will include a roasted carrot salad discovered in a recent issue of Real Simple magazine, which mysteriously arrived in our mailbox last month, sans subscription.

As I added the ingredients to my shopping list, I naturally began wondering whether carrots show up anywhere in the work of Jane Austen.

And they do! Carrots, it turns out, are among the very few foods about which Mr. Woodhouse has no qualms, as he explains to his long-suffering daughter and her future husband in chapter 21 of Emma:

“If it [a leg of pork] is not over-salted, and if it is very thoroughly boiled, just as Serle boils ours, and eaten very moderately of, with a boiled turnip, and a little carrot or parsnip, I do not consider it unwholesome."

Here’s hoping that our carrot salad–and your holiday fare, whatever it may be–will prove equally “not unwholesome,” or perhaps even tasty. Happy Thanksgiving!