I had some leftover veggies that were quickly approaching use or lose. In fact, there were some losses. But I was determined that before I lost the whole lot I would do something with them. So I went through the fridge last night, picked out the bad, kept the good, and this is what I ended up with:
3 or 4 green onions, a few chives, 5 leftover slices of russet potato, 1 zucchini, 2 yellow squash, 2 parsnips, 1 avocado, and 2 apples. I pulled out 3 carrots from the bag, the last lime, 1 of the 3 lemons, and a sweet potato also. But what on earth was I going to do with all this? As an aside, before I continue, I want to note that those are the 2 crappy apples that my daughter did NOT get when she ate my really really good Gala apples. Not that the Galas would have gone into this dish.
I opted for roasting them since I had some practice last week roasting veggies, and turned the oven on at 350 to heat up. I threw in a second sweet potato and started peeling and slicing. After the carrots, parsnips, russet slices, and sweet potatoes, it became quite clear that my bowl was not big enough to fit the squash in.
I transferred to the larger bowl and added the squash, avocado, and apples.
This is the point I thought I would be tossing them with olive oil, but the big bowl was too full and that’s the biggest bowl I have. So instead of tossing them, I put parchment down in the big baking dish (because I learned that parchment not only keeps the food from sticking, but makes for waaay easier cleanup) and drizzled them with olive oil. I semi-randomly picked spices to add based on a general taste I was hoping for.
The salt & pepper weren’t random, but I picked white pepper because I just don’t really like the taste of black pepper. Never have. I know, I’m weird. My parent’s peppered EVERYTHING. It sucked. But anyway… I put thyme in something last week that was ok, I love ginger (and would have put fresh ginger in but that had to be thrown out), and I thought the nutmeg would go really well with the sweet potatoes. The cilantro, well, it’s cilantro. It’s a must. Ready for the oven in 15 minute increments it was:
In the meantime, I went to work on the chives & green onions, and threw in 4 cloves of garlic.
Every 15 min, I would take the veggies out and stir them up. This was probably the 30 minute mark.
After an hour and 15 min, half the carrots and parsnips were still on the crunchy side. (Yes, there was a lesson learned.) I then put on a honey badger attitude, and squeezed the lime and lemon over it and put it back in for 10 more minutes.
I should have tasted it BEFORE I added the lime & lemon juice. Another lesson learned. I don’t know if it was just one of them that was a mistake or both, but I didn’t care for the flavor. It’s not so bad I couldn’t eat it, and even the hubster liked it ok. He didn’t love it, but it was good enough he could eat it, but not so good he would eat too much. Sadly, that makes perfect sense.
Lessons learned. 1) I am terrible at determining how much “prepared” I will have after peeling and slicing when looking at the raw material. 2) I take forever to prep. 3) I suck at picking out good (read firm) avocado. 4) Ok, this one I already knew, but carrots & parsnips will take longer to cook than the rest of that stuff. 5) Taste at every point when experimenting.
And yes, I know apples are not veggies, but I had to get rid of them.
