Spicy Pickled Carrots

When we first moved to Madison, we frequented Casa de Lara where we experienced spicy pickled carrots served in our chip bowl. Such delicious memories of those that my mouth actually started watering typing that last sentence. Our first year as Harmony Valley members we acquired enough carrots to can a few batches of our own. That was several years ago, so it's been a long time since jars of orange pickled goodness have graced our pantry shelves.

A few weeks ago, Harmony Valley Farm offered a produce plus box of 10 pounds of carrots to its members. That means that members can buy an item in bulk in addition to their regular vegetable boxes. Our intention with all of these carrots involved lots of juicing (and freezing that juice for later consumption) and canning spicy pickled carrots!

Tonight, we canned 5 quarts of these spicy treats for later and pickled 2 quarts for refrigerator storage. I wish we had found time earlier this month to get this work done. I'd have loved to share these along with some homemade tortilla chips and canned salsa over the holidays. Oh well! Easter, perhaps?

The recipe is here, on one of our favorite fellow foodie blogs, Hitchhiking to Heaven. If you haven't, check this blog out! It's ripe with recipes for anything you'd ever want to jam, jelly, and/or can.

The only adaptions we made were:
1) we cut ours into slices instead of spears to make it easy to add these sour-spicy-sweet snacks to our chip bowl.
2) we added one dried guajillo pepper to each jar for an extra kick!