Dark Days Update #9: Carrot Mash & Homemade Tater Tots

Note from Fred: This Dark Days update has been written by my girlfriend Gail. Without her support and encouragement I would never have started gardening or expanding my cooking skills. Gail does a lot of the cooking for us, usually more then I do, so I thought it would be nice if she did a write up for this meal as she did all of the work.
Our most recent Dark Days Challenge meal was wonderful. The carrot mash recipe comes from a local friend, while the tater tots are a result of our cooking adventures this summer and came from our freezer.

Carrot Mash
This delicious dish was previously titled Carrot Pudding, but I've changed the title after altering the dish (making a few errors) and it still came out delicious! After my modifications/mistakes I know this recipe is foolproof!
2lbs of carrots
1/2 cup butter, melted
3/4 cup sugar
1 cup flour
2 cups of milk
2 eggs
vanilla, to taste
cinnamon, to taste
-Preheat oven to 350F
-Peel & slice carrots
-Boil until tender (about 40 minutes)
-Transfer carrots to a food processor. Add butter and sugar. Process until smooth.
-Add rest of the ingredients. Pulse until combined.
-Put in a greased casserole dish and bake at 350F for 90 minutes.

Homemade Tater Tots
via Pennies on a Platter
While the outcome is delicious, this is a very labor intensive recipe
8 russet potatoes
1/4 cup milk
1 cup flour
3 eggs, beaten
2 cups crushed potato chips
-Preheat oven to 400F
-Boil potatoes in a large pot until barely fork tender, about 20 minutes. Drain and return to pot.
-Gradually add the milk and mash the potatoes until mashed, but still lumpy. You may not need to use all of the milk. It is important to keep the potatoes lumpy but a little dry so it isn't to messy to roll them into balls.
-Separate eggs, flour, and potato chips into 3 bowls and set aside.
-Form the potato mixture into 1-inch balls and place on wax or parchment paper. Roll each ball first into the bowl of flour, then the eggs, finishing with the chips.
-Once coated, form the balls into tots formation and place onto a baking sheet.
-Bake 12 to 15 minutes, until crispy and golden brown.

I will save you the details showing the exact mileage all of our products are from our apartment, but everything except the sugar, vanilla and cinnamon is between 12 and 152 miles from us! Here are the local ingredients in the Carrot Mash & Tater Tots:
Carrots (Red Fire Farm), Potatoes (Allandale), Butter (Katie's Homemade), Flour (King Arthur Flour), Milk (Organic Cow), Eggs (Baffoni's Poultry Farm), & Potato Chips (Cape Cod Potato Chips)