Healthy Roasted Vegetable Recipe

This recipe, like most, has a story behind it. First, you must understand that I am just not a vegetable lover (and that’s putting it mildly). If you’ve read this blog for long you probably already knew that. I am trying to develop more of a taste for vegetables, but I’ll probably never be able to pick up some raw broccoli and just start munching on it.

Therefore, you will rarely see things like raw cauliflower, raw broccoli, fresh zucchini, fresh squash, or peppers in my shopping cart. I hardly even know what to do with them. When I do try to eat some veggies I usually go for the frozen kind since most of the work is done for you and I usually steam them to extreme softness and then chop them up as tiny as possible to trick myself into eating them. That said, I have had some roasted vegetables (at restaurants and my work cafeteria occasionally has them) that were quite tasty.

Since I read lots of healthy living blogs, I see tons of images of vegetables prepared in all sorts of tasty (or not so tasty to me) ways. I read a post where a lady described how she roasted her vegetables, and I was completely inspired. She talked about coming home from work, de-stressing by chopping up some veggies, and then showering while they roasted. By the time she was done with her shower they were all ready for her. Preparing them really only took a few minutes.

I thought, why can’t I do that? It sounds so nice. I want to be one of those people who is constantly buying fresh produce, going to farmers markets, and buying the longest share of a CSA. So I went to a small (non chain) grocery store that’s known for having a lot of local produce. I filled my cart with broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, zucchini, yellow squash, red potatoes, grapes, strawberries, and a couple oranges. My total was $28! I was a little surprised by that, but I figured an investment in my health was worth it. (By the way, I gobbled up the fruit in two days. I’m picky about my fruit, but when it’s good, I  love it.)

On Saturday I set out to make the roasted vegetables. I couldn’t wait to taste the recipe and then blog about it so I could inspire you all not to be afraid of raw vegetables. I was excited to tell you about how good it tasted, how easy and relaxing it was to prepare, and how it really only took a few minutes. I didn’t want you to be able to say “I don’t have time for this.”

Let me tell you straight-up, folks. It did taste pretty good. It was absolutely not easy or relaxing to prepare. It took forever to prepare! I actually timed it (you know, because I couldn’t wait to tell you all – “see, it only took 17 minutes” or something along those lines). It took me 70 minutes to prep the veggies (and another 40 minutes of roasting).

Before you go running as fast as you can away from this horribly time consuming recipe, let me share a few more details that might make you stick around. Learn from my experience. My first mistake was that I had way too many vegetables! It two 12” x 18” pans worth. It would be much more manageable with less quantity. Secondly, you can totally do this with frozen vegetables. Just grab a bag of frozen broccoli, frozen cauliflower, and some frozen pepper strips, and you can throw something like this together in no time. I don’t think you can buy frozen squash, but that was honestly my least favorite part. It just doesn’t roast quite as crisply as the other veggies. I wonder if you could even toss in a few of the frozen hash brown cube potatoes. I plan to test it soon and get back to you.