Healthy carrots for the bunny!

I know the Easter Bunny is planning to visit a lot of houses this weekend, so how about a carrot-centric menu? And everybody will be stuffed with sugar from all the candy, so it only makes sense to create a healthy (well, '70s health-foody) menu from The Natural Foods Cookbook (Beatrice Trum Hunter, copyright 1961, but mine is from a 1975 printing) to counterbalance it. What could be better (well, other than a menu that tastes good, is unlikely to trigger sensory-specific satiety, and uses way less gelatin and soy)?

We need to start out with an appetizer, so the Carrot-Pineapple Appetizer should get your appetite started without filling you up. 

Just be sure to blend it really well. Otherwise, it could be a bit chunky, and I'm not sure many people want big carrot chunks in their pineapple juice.

Easter is often still a bit chilly, so a hot soup might be a good prelude to the meal.

And yes, the Quick Carrot Soup also fulfills the milk powder requirement imposed by '70s health food menus, along with whole wheat and soy flours and more nutritional yeast (in case there wasn't enough in the appetizer). 

We know no special-occasion '70s menu is complete without a gelatin-based salad, so Carrot Molded Salad is up next.

This one uses plain gelatin with cider and sunflower seeds in place of the more usual lemon-flavored Jell-O and crushed pineapple. 

Now, we need a ring for this to be a proper vintage menu, and we need some soybeans to make it a proper '70s healthy recipe. That means Carrot-Soybean Ring is the perfect main course!

Who wouldn't want the holiday centerpiece to be a ring of carrot custard filled with edamame? (Well, other than just about any reasonable human being... It was a rhetorical question.)

And now, dessert. A carrot cake is so overdone, right? Well, how about Carrot Chiffon Pie?

You'll notice it has some of the usual carrot cake spices. It will just be cold, very lightly sweet (only two tablespoons of honey!), and loaded with raw eggs so everyone can wonder whether they should worry about salmonella. Oh, and no pesky cream cheese icing that makes carrot cake so good. Sugar and saturated fat, you know. This carrot pie is the perfect cap for a menu that even the Easter Bunny would probably question. A plain carrot is better any day...