Costco rewards

Last night, when Dave came home, I did a Costco run.  What can I say? Sometimes it's just exciting to leave the house by myself these days. It doesn't happen so often anymore, so even Costco can be an adventure. Actually, it turns out that going to Costco on a weekday, an hour before closing is, in fact, the absolute best (maybe even the only tolerable) time to be there. I felt like I had the place to myself, which was slightly surreal, considering the scene there on a Saturday afternoon. I got lots of stuff, among which was an absolutely giant bag of organic baby carrots. When I finally got it home, I almost regretted my purchase, except for the fact that Jacob now eats carrots and it makes sense to have lots of them so I don't have to keep running out to buy more. Still, I have A LOT of carrots now. I realized that if I didn't do something with them right away, they'd be wasted, so I suddenly found myself blanching several batches of carrots late at night. That was my first time ever blanching something. It's easy, let me tell you. All you have to do is drop them in boiling water for 3 minutes, then dump them in ice water and drain them. Piece of cake. Except now I have a freezer full of blanched carrots. How long can blanched carrots survive in the freezer, I wonder? When I was done with the carrots, I attacked my next new collection of perishables: the sweet potatoes. I baked off a couple of them in tinfoil, and by the time my blanching was done, I had two perfect sweet potato packages. I mashed one of them up with some water, and got three days worth of food for the kid. Not too shabby. The other one I ate this morning, and was floored by how delicious it was. I added nothing to it, and it was seriously one of the most enjoyable culinary experiences I've had in my own home. When I unwrapped it, there was a syrup sticking to the skin that tasted like maple syrup. ENOUGH SAID.