Should you carrot all?

Is it spring yet? Just about every other day, I have to yell at the sky that snow should be pretty much over by April, but the only discernible effect is that the neighbors cut a slightly wider path around me than usual. Well, I guess the yelling is good for something....

Anyway, today I'm bringing in a bit of veggie sunshine based on the April produce recommendations of Betty Crocker's Cooking Calendar (1962). April is carrot month.

Well, it's carrot and pineapple month if we look at the featured veggie and fruit, and my perusal of carrot recipes found they were often teamed up with their favorite fruit, even outside of the typical carrot cake. There's this springtime classic from Better Homes & Gardens Salad Book (1958):

Gotta love the pineapple-tidbit-and-green-pepper flower! Fresh out of the fridge, it's a bit warmer than the daffodils outside.

If the weather leaves you wanting the carrots and pineapple warm, Favorite Recipes of Home Economics Teachers Vegetables Including Fruits (1966) offers some pretty straightforward carrot/pineapple casseroles, like this one:

This is a 4-5 pound casserole, so people better like it!

Now that Easter is over and people are desperately trying to use up the last of their leftover hard cooked eggs, the carrot and hard-cooked eggs dishes might be more appropriate than the pineapple pairings. If you're a fan of the random-foods-mashed-together genre of salads, this recipe from Favorite Recipes of America Salads Including Appetizers (1968) might be your new jam:

I know my mouth always waters when I think about grated carrots, chopped celery, diced eggs, and "rolled" soda crackers coated in peanut butter and salad dressing.

Wait... I think I mean that I'm sad about the waste of perfectly good peanut butter.
For lovers of good old-fashioned ring molds, the home ec teachers offer this beauty:

If mashed carrots bound with eggs and bread crumbs, then served under a béchamel sauce with hard cooked eggs sounds bland, take heart: "Additional seasonings may be added with the eggs." What constituted seasoning in this context, I'm not sure, but I'll guess maybe oregano?

If your heart belongs to the canned cream-of-something soup casseroles, the teachers have a hard-boiled-egg-and-carrot recipe for you too:

With its reliance on a can of soup, cheese, tiny measures of onion and green pepper for flavor, and eggs for protein, this recipe seems like the textbook example of a money-saving, pantry-emptying mid-century recipe. No wonder the teachers loved it...

And if your tastes run to the inedible monstrosity in Jell-O (rather than the adorable, sweet pineapple flower on Jell-O) variety, I have one final recipe for you from Better Homes and Gardens. Sorry, it doesn't include hard-cooked eggs, but I'm sure you could chuck some in anyway, and they would be just as at home as anything else.

When orange juice and gelatin are rubbing elbows with cabbage and carrots while surrounded by pears who suspect they've showed up at the wrong party and aren't sure how to make a quick exit before the pickles make eye contact, well, nobody's comfortable.

"Yeah, guys, we've... uh... got this work thing, so we better head out early..."

*Pears begin backing into the late-arriving hard-cooked eggs, just off camera.*

Things are about to get really interesting in Carrot-'n-Cabbage Tower! Tune in next week when the pickles figure out what the hard cooked eggs have been up to when nobody was watching....