If gardening enthusiasts are to be believed, home-grown vegetables are not only more virtuous than the store-bought variety, but also better tasting, more attractive, richer in vitamins, and capable of scoring higher on the SAT. Sometimes this is the case: pictured at right is what turned out to be The Perfect Strawberry. More often, however, home-grown vegetables resemble typical do-it-yourself products, like the tumor-shaped “stuffed animals” I sewed at age six or the Billy Ray Cyrusine “haircuts” my mother inflicted on my two-year-old self.
Last fall, I decided a few odd-looking runts among my carrot crop simply hadn’t yet lived up to their potential, so I stuck them back in the ground and came back in the spring. The carrots were certainly no longer runts, but they had more than fulfilled their infant promise of ugliness. As you can see in the following picture, some spent the winter battling leprosy, others hypertrichosis (i.e., wolfman-er, wolfcarrot syndrome): 
In honor of their unmatched hideousness, I gave them fittingly hideous names. Yuppies may breed freckled McKenzies and organically diapered Kaitlynns, but I grow portly Wilburts:
hirsute Hortons:
and my favorites, the lopsided Plimptons (no relation to George):
How do you eat these unique beauties? You grate them, of course. Grate them beyond recognition.
