I’ve been on a side dish kick. Part of that is the lingering plethora of side dish friendly veggies hanging out in my fridge. Another part is that I’ve been battling the world’s most tenacious cold for months now, and it’s hit the point where eating a side is about as far as my interest in meals is going. Especially sweets, which is weird. But it made the New Best Recipe‘s idea of glazed carrots really appealing.
I’m going to be honest, I didn’t bother to measure anything for this recipe. It’s hard to go wrong with pecans, bacon, brown sugar, and veggies, so I just use proportions that looked fitting and tasty. 
The recipe definitely called for chopping the bacon, then cooking it. I did it in the other order since that saved me from having to clean raw pork goo off a cutting board. I’m lazy like that.
If you’ve never toasted nuts, I recommend it for the olfactory experience. You just need a bit of oil, and then you leave them in the skillet until they smell good. I really like recipes where, “until it smells good,” is a significant element of the timing.
This was the part where my eyeballing of portions came the closest to getting me into trouble – the carrots didn’t quite fit into the cast iron skillet. I’m irrationally fond of cooking in that skillet, so even though we have another one where the size would work just fine, I sucked it up and made it work. 
And I got away with it, too. The glazing process involved throwing in some chicken stock for a quasi-braise in the cooking process, and the carrots cooked down just enough that I could stir them well enough to get the second batch of sugar and the butter mixed in well.
I did not eat that entire plate of carrots in a sitting. I did eat them over the course of about three meals. They were tasty! So tasty that I feel a little bit guilty about nothing having shared any with the roommies. Just a little, though. I’m greedier than I am kind.
Anaea Lay 