vacation placeholder: oven-roasted vegetable recipe

My absolute favorite way to eat broccoli:  roasted in the oven alongside cauliflower, carrots, and onions.

You will need:

* A medium head each of broccoli and cauliflower, cut into florets

* One medium onion (yellow or red, whichever you prefer), roughly chopped

* A few carrots, peeled and cut into coins

* Olive oil

* Minced garlic

* Sea salt, black pepper, crushed red pepper, or other seasonings of your choice

* Balsamic vinegar (the higher the quality the better--our one big cooking "splurge" item)

* Grated parmesan

This is a pretty simple recipe, although I find it easiest to do in two steps:

Step 1:  Wash, pat dry, and chop all vegetables during Natalie's naptime so I don't have a little person racing around my feet as I wield a large knife.  Fit them into a baking pan, cover with aluminum foil, and then leave in the fridge until closer to suppertime.

Step 2:  About 45 minutes before we're ready to eat, it's time to preheat the oven (425 F) and season the vegetables.

* Coat vegetables in about 2 tablespoons of olive oil (not an exact measurement--just enough so that the vegetables all have a little bit of oil on them, but aren't sopping with it)

* Add seasonings of your choice--I add a couple of cloves of minced garlic (fresh or from a jar), loads of black pepper, a bit of sea salt, and some crushed red pepper.  Mix it all up with a spoon or your hands

* Top with a couple of swirls of balsamic vinegar and a couple shakes of parmesan (we always just use the generic stuff from a jar, but I bet some fresh parmesan would be delightful)

Bake at 425 for 15 minutes

Give the whole thing a good mix

Continue baking for 10 more minutes

Devour.  Seriously, I feel like I'm eating candy when we make these.  There are random evenings after Natalie has gone to bed that I discover we have some broccoli and cauliflower in the fridge and convince Mike that it's not weird to make this for dessert.

Let me know if you have any other yummy vegetable recipes that I just must try when we're back from vacation.  Hope you're having a great week!  I'll be back with regularly scheduled blogging by the end of the week.