March 22, 2010

Roasted veggies!

It was Saturday afternoon, it had been snowy and cold and windy all day, and I didn’t want to go to the store. I knew I had some stuff I could make something with. I looked in my freezer and saw I had a whole chicken and I quickly defrosted that in the microwave. Then I looked to see what veggies I had. I had a bag of potatoes, some carrots, a head of cauliflower and frozen green beans. I decided to just roast all those in one dish!

I actually cooked the potatoes in the microwave on the “baked potato” setting but stopped when it had a few minutes left. I still wanted them to be kind of firm. I sliced those into large wedges. Then I cut up about 5 carrots, I cut up the cauliflower, and put several huge handfuls of frozen green beans. I drizzled about 1 tablespoon of olive oil on top, and sprinkled with salt and pepper.

Bake for about 45 minutes, or until they start to brown and can be pierced easily with a fork. Can I just tell you that all 3 of my kids LOVED the roasted veggies. Especially the cauliflower! I decided to sprinkle a little fresh parmesan cheese over the cauliflower, so I’m sure that helped.

And the chicken couldn’t be easier either. I just mixed poultry seasoning, salt and pepper, and oregano on top of the skin.

Since the roasted veggies turned out so well, I decided to roast some more veggies for green salsa for taco night the next night.

In a 9×13 pan, I put 1 1/4 pounds of tomatillos (about 10), take the paper off, wash the skin off (its kind of sticky) and just set them in the pan whole. Then I added about 4 cloves of garlic, 1/2 a medium sized white onion, 1 jalapeno and baked that at 350 for about 40 minutes.

Take out of the oven and let cool. Just throw all that in a blender with the juice of half a lime and fresh cilantro. It totally made taco night even better AND it cost about a dollar to make!