roasted vegetables

This is as easy as chopping an onion, some broccoli, and cauliflower.

Ingredients:
an onion
Vegetables:  my favorites right now are broccoli and cauliflower, or asparagus (when in season).

Directions:  preheat the oven to 400 F, while chopping the vegetables.  Put them in a large glass baking dish.  Put them in the oven for 20 minutes.  stir.  Cook another 20 minutes.   Now you decide if you want to cook them longer.  This depends on your oven and your preferences.  Note that they will continue to cook as they cool.  But if you like them softer and sweeter, you can leave them in another 10-20 minutes, or turn off the oven without removing them and let them continue to cook as the oven slowly cools.  After a few experiments you'll know what you prefer.

Note on onions:  The vidalias are the most sweet, and the reds are least.   They will all sweeten up with roasting.

Note on not adding liquids.  Notice I didn't include oil or water.  The onions release water as it cooks.  It's possible if you didn't use onions, maybe you'd want 1 T of water.  But the veggies release liquid too.  Anyway, for this recipe, no added liquids are needed!

Feel free to add any seasonings or salt if you you'd like.  If I'm taking my veggies to a potluck, I'll usually add salt since most people are used to eating a lot of salt.  Otherwise, even though I do eat some salt in my diet, I don't find any desire to add salt to these when making for myself, as they are flavorful and sweet all on their own.

Here are my starting ingredients:

Pre-baking

All done:

Easy and good baked veggies

This makes 1-2 meals.  Put 1/4 cup lentils in the bottom of a baking dish.  Cut up whatever veggies you have that seem like they would be good. Today I used onion, beet, and kohlrabi.  Tomorrow I'll do those plus eggplant.   Add 1 cup water.  

Top with foil.  Bake at 375 for 1 hour 15 minutes (including oven heating up).   Let cool.  stir, serve or save for tomorrow.  

If you have beans already cooked, you can forget the lentils and add the beans afterwards.  I also cook up greens and onions, and have those on the side.

grilled, baked, roasted? asparagus!

Here are the complicated instructions to this yummy food:
Turn on the oven to 350.  Throw a bunch of asparagus on a baking sheet.  put in the oven for 30 minutes. take out.  let cool.  chop into smaller pieces if you want.

Boy is this ever good.  It has a sweet taste, and the tops are crunchy.   I'm going to put it on my salad tomorrow.

So what do you call that:  baked, roasted, or grilled?

today's salad, this week's food

Today my salad is so good it boggles my mind, because it is simple.   I just chopped a head of romaine lettuce, a half lb of cabbage, some raw cauliflower, added 1/2 cup frozen peas, 1/2 cup frozen edamame, a grapefruit, peeled and chopped (okay, a really good grapefruit from Texas called Rio Star), an ounce of my seed mixture, 2 Tbsp Dr. Fuhrman's D'angou pear vinegar.  Now it's true, the high quality ingredients is what makes this salad delish--the good grapefruit, and the d'angou pear vinegar add a wonderful taste sensation that is not sour.  Wow. This made two giant salads.  I also made a microscopic version for housemate.  I'll have these for dinner?  --in 2 stages for sure.

Next week, first the first 3 days anyway, my micro salads will have lettuce, cabbage, carrots, satsuma (small orange), asian pear (a honey-sweet apple), small pomegranate, flavored vinegar, and seed mixture.  I'm expecting that to be yummy!  My roasted veggies will be broccoli, cauliflower, a little butternut squash, a little beets, onion, with chives, sage and basil ('cause I have some in the freezer from the garden), and I'm still working on the marinate, but probably orange juice and no-salt mustard.  Breakfast will be light before exercise,  a bowl of frozen cherries, blueberries, mangos.  Lunch and dinner will be bean soup, micro-salad, and roasted veggies.  I'll probably eat my lunch bean soup early because I'll be hungry after exercise.  I still have lots of bean soup from two batches in the freezer so don't have to make any this week.  Yum, talk about eating like a king.  I am amazed that I sometimes go off plan to eat junk because I think I'm missing something.  This food is thousands of time better.  I wish I could remember that all the time!

Update to my Previous Post

I got some interesting comments to my last post so I just wanted to respond to them.  Lani had a different view of the Weekend Immersion, so please read her comment if you are interested.  Wendy pointed out a great post from her blog about the chemicals in food designed to make them as stimulating as possible.  I highly recommend reading this and watching the attached video.

Then I also wanted to update you on my roasted veggie experiment.  It turned out great!  For marinate I used juice from 1/2 orange, 1 Tbsp of black fig vinegar, and a squeeze of no-salt mustard--maybe 1-2 Tbsps?  I used onions, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, sweet potato.  About 1/4 lb each.  Tonight I will use more as I needed more food today.  maybe I'll use 1/3 lb each.  I think I'll cook it for 40 minutes with the foil, and 20 minutes without.  Yesterday I did 30 minutes and 15.  Actually that did turn out pretty good.  Maybe I will do 35 and 15.  I don't want them soggy.  or 30 and 20.  It might take me a few days to get it right.  My seasonings were fresh rosemary and sage.    It was really good!