I LIVE MY LIFE IN THE GREY AREAS

...or, I should say, roasted numminess!

So, lately I have been experimenting with eating more vegetables.

As I am sure I have mentioned before, my parents don't eat vegetables (well, except corn), so I grew up rarely ever eating them. As an adult, I have tried a few things with vegetables, but it's mostly been eating them at friend's houses and restaurants as I have been a bit gunshy with cooking them at home.

One thing that I have discovered recently has been the glories of roasting vegetables. I never used the oven much in cooking until recently, but since I have, I have really enjoyed the way things carmelize in there. I have mostly only done this with carrots so far, but tonight I decided to try roasting broccoli.

I was inspired by this recipe by Rachael Ray, but also from some googling where I found this recipe (which has some good reference pictures).

So, being home alone tonight, I decided it would be a perfect night to try the food experiment of roasting broccoli (especially since justben doesn't eat broccoli).

I did and it was oh-my-goodness good!

Here is what I made (roughly):
( Roasted Broccoli Recipe )

And while I am at it, since I was chatting about it last night with wheezinggirl and mtn_hermit and they wanted a recipe, here is my recipe for roasted carrots:

( Roasted Carrot Recipe (Baked Carrot Fries) )

Happy roasting! :)

Tonight justben cooked our first meal together in the house since I moved in. Now that I am out of work, we will be cooking at home much more and not eating out at every meal as we have been thus far.

We had a fun time grocery shopping and delighting in ideas of things we could make. Then tonight we excitedly made our first meal here.

First we grabbed some saffron rice and started it cooking with some red pepper flakes. Then we opened our new olive oil, libated some to Hestia and the Agathos Daimon, and then pour some into a skillet over high heat. We then added some dehydrated onions and garlic to the oil. We took some chicken and sliced it up in long strips (leaving a small bit to burn for the goods -- see last post). We then added the chicken to the oil and added a small bit of cayenne to the chicken as well. We sauteed it up and then transferred to a plate once finished.

After cooking the chicken, we added some thickly sliced portabello mushrooms to the same skillet we used for the chicken, added a bit of butter, and then sauteed them with the butter and leftover flavorings from the oil.

About the time that the mushrooms finished, the saffron rice was finished as well. We added the chicken to the skillet with the mushrooms to reheat and then poured the mixture over the rice.

It ended up very, very yummy!

After that we burned our sacrifice of leftover chicken to the Gods. Now we have a smokey house. ;)