July 2016

Let’s say that you have some leftover roasted veggies sitting in your fridge, and you were trying to figure out what to do with them.

Might I recommend a scrumptious roasted veggie sandwich?!

What you’ll need:
Hummus (I used garlic and herb)
Whole wheat bread
1 cup of roasted veggies

Grab your hummus, toast some whole wheat bread, and warm up a cup of roasted veggies that you may have been inspired to make this past 4th of July (about 45 seconds should do the trick). I used a garlic and herb hummus which worked wonderfully, especially since I used garlic based seasonings for the roasted vegetables. Spread the hummus on your toast, top with vegetables, and bite into that sucker.

Easy peasy, delicious, and healthy. You’ve got your servings of vegetables, you’ve got the whole grains from your bread, and if you’re a fiber snob like me, that bread also comes with a hefty serving of fiber.

You can choose to leave it open face, or go all out and make a full blown sandwich. Personally, I prefer option number two. I’ve never gotten the whole open face thing. What, did you run out of bread??

I’ll be enjoying my fair share of these this weekend and in the coming weeks, since they take less than 5 minutes to prepare once you have the veggies on hand. Now that my comprehensive exams are officially one month away, quickie meals will be my go to. Eeeeek!

Enjoy and have a fabulous weekend<3

Technically, this post should be titled “Summer roasted garlic squash AND bell peppers, parsnips, and eggplants” but that just didn’t do it for me.

I love some good ol fashioned roasted veggies. With the right seasonings they can be magic. They’re so simple but they taste amazing. Since showing up to a party full-handed is always a good idea, I wanted to share this simple summer dish of assorted roasted veggies.

Ingredients:
Olive oil cooking spray
Veggies
Parsnips
Bell peppers
Eggplant
Yellow squash
Zucchini squash
Seasonings
Sea salt
Rosemary Garlic
Garlic & herb seasoning (can be found at Walmart)

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and spray it with a nonstick cooking spray.
I removed the skin from my parsnips with a peeler and de-seeded my bell peppers before slicing.
Slice your veggies.
Since the parsnips and bell peppers can take a little longer to cook and the eggplant and squash cooks faster, I recommend cooking the former two together and the latter three together. You may have to cook them in batches.

Coat your veggies evenly with your olive oil cooking spray (I prefer using this to plain olive oil because I can make sure everything gets coated evenly).

To season the parsnips and bell peppers, I topped them with sea salt and a generous coating of rosemary garlic.

For the eggplant and squash I used sea salt and the garlic and herb seasoning.

Roast the parsnips & bell peppers for 35 minutes.

Roast the squash for 12-15 minutes.

Cover veggies with aluminum foil before transporting them to the partayy.

I’ve roasted all types of veggies including brussel sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, and carrots depending on what tickles my fancy at a particular period. For this, since squash is the quintessential summer vegetable I couldn’t leave it out of the mix. I added in eggplant because it’s a more grownup veggie, bell peppers because I love a little heat, and parsnips because I’ve recently become obsessed with them. But by all means choose your faves.

Funny story (not really): For the first time on Saturday I decided to do something that seemed adult like and take advantage of my oven’s self clean function. For those of you who’ve done this, you know that the oven has to be locked beforehand. Well, now I have a clean oven that I can’t open. Damn lever! I called my apt. office and they told me that maintenance most likely wouldn’t be able to get to it until Tuesday since this was a holiday weekend and didn’t constitute a maintenance emergency.

Besides learning that we differ greatly on what constitutes an emergency, I’ve learned that dirty ovens are just fine because at least you can access them.

Has this happened to anyone else? Or have I just proved that I’m meant to be a kid forever?!