Roasted Veggies: Getting my raw materials ready for the week!

How to eat healthy, homemade food, save time and not end up with soggy rotten veggies in your fridge at the end of the week?

I have blogged before about prepping veggies in advance for the week. It ensures that even when you are dog tired and don't feel like cooking at the end of a long day, you can still eat something delicious and healthy at home!

This week I bought a bunch of veggies at the market on my day off and got them all ready in no time by using the oven to roast them. The advantage over other kinds of cooking is a) the flavor and versatility of roasted veggies and b) the fact that you are free to read, blog, nap or watch cat videos on YouTube while your veggies cook!

Veggies all chopped up and ready to be seasoned in the bowl!

Fresh ingredients this week:

• 1 zucchini
• 1 eggplant
• 2 tomatoes
• 1 red onion
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 carrot
• 5 cloves of garlic

Other ingredients:

• Sea Salt
• Black pepper
• Dry Thyme
• Olive Oil

Before cooking, the seasoned veggies are all spread out on a baking sheet/pan.

Instructions:

• Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius
• Wash and chop the veggies -- I sliced the eggplant and carrot into rounds, quartered the onion and tomatoes, cut the bell pepper into thick strips and left the garlic cloves whole, with the skins on. The zucchini was chopped into bite-sized cubes.
• Put all the chopped veggies in a large bowl.
• Add salt and pepper to taste, sprinkle some thyme and add a few lugs of olive oil.
• Toss to coat.
• Spread onto a baking tray.
• Pop into the oven for 45min. or so. Go do something fun.

These ingredients are to be transformed throughout the week into delicious meals, different every time so you don't get bored. Stay tuned!

Cooked and ready to be transformed into any delicious meal!

Steamed Veggies for a Week of Healthy Eating

I spent a few hours on the weekend chopping, washing and steaming a bunch of veggies, including squash, onions, garlic, spinach, cauliflower and broccoli. I also made a good portion of whole rice mixed with barley to keep in my fridge, and defrosted some black beans i had cooked a while back. I have talked before about how my busy schedule makes it hard for me to cook during the week, and I have found that washing and cooking the veggies in advance helps me eat home cooked meals throughout the week!

Reimagining the veggies and creating dishes with them later in the week is fast and easy! A bit of vegetable broth and I have soup, a few spices and I have curry, a blender and I have a dip or purée to eat with chips or pita...

This pic is of the veggies eaten pretty much straight up, with some salt, a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and some olive oil! Yum!

Roasted Bell Peppers (the stuffed of legend!)

My dinner tonight was divine if I should say so myself...

I have made stuffed bell peppers myself before, mostly intuitively, putting in them rice, veggies, and anything else I found lying around. But tonight was different. Against my better judgment, I followed a recipe by Jamie Oliver after downloading his app, Jamie's Recipes for the iPhone. Now, I say against my better judgment not because I do not like Jamie Oliver but because I do not like recipes, nor do I ever really follow them. But I decided to download Jamie's app because it has good reviews, I have seen and enjoyed hi TV shows, and his app has a whole recipe package for tray bakes, my favorite way of cooking!

The finished product looked colorful and was absolutely delicious!

I love tray bakes because, in Jamie's words, "it's basically just an assembly job." Yes, I enjoy throwing things together and then just allowing the oven to do its thing while I do my thing. That's what cooking reluctantly is all about!

So anyways, the point is, Jamie's recipe was pretty mind-blowing. It was absolutely DELICIOUS and I  kind of felt sad that no one was around to share it with me, but happy it worked out and I can maybe impress some friends with this sometime. I don't usually cook for others when I am trying to make something for the first time... takes the pressure off ;)

These were the ingredients:

• 1 Red Bell Pepper
• 1 Yellow Bell Pepper
• 1 Ripe Tomato
• 1 Eggplant (Jamie's recipe said 1/2 but Chinese eggplants are so small... plus, what the hell am I going to do with half an eggplant in my fridge?!)
• 1 Red Onion
• 1/2 Head of Garlic
• Fresh Parsley, Mint and Thyme
• Lemon
• 1/2 Tablespoon Coriander seeds
• Kalamata Olives (I just used regular black olives in mine)
• Sun-dried tomatos
• 100g. (about 4 oz.) Feta Cheese
• Pine Nuts
• 1/3 cup of couscous
• 1/2 cup of chicken broth (Jamie says vegetable, but I was out!)
• Salt & Pepper to Taste
• Olive Oil 

Beautiful, fresh ingredients just for me :)

1. I chopped up the zucchini and eggplant into bite-sized pieces. I quartered the tomato and peeled half of the onion, cutting it into wedges. I put all these ingredients straight onto the roasting pan.
2. I picked the thyme leaves off the stems and discarded the stems. Then I ground up the coriander seeds using the mortar and pestle, separated the garlic cloves from each other, leaving the skins on, and setting 2 of the garlic cloves aside for later. I added the thyme, coriander and garlic cloves to the veggies on the roasting pan, added some salt, pepper, and a few glugs of olive oil and mixed everything up so the veggies were all evenly coated. I set this aside.
3. I preheated the oven to around 200 degrees Celsius (400 Fahrenheit). Meanwhile, I put the pine nuts in a non-stick frying pan over medium heat and moved them around until they were a nice golden brown (just a couple minutes).
4. I heated up the chicken broth in a saucepan and added it to the couscous in a large mixing bowl, which I then covered with a lid. While the couscous was doing its thing...
5. I minced the remaining half of the onion really fine and sautéed it in olive oil over very low heat, allowing it to get really soft but not brown. While it was heating up I minced the remaining 2 garlic cloves and added those in too. 
6. When the onion and garlic were done, I chopped up the olives and sun-dried tomatoes, picked the leaves off of the parsley and mint stems and chopped them up finely. Then I added the onion, garlic, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, pine nuts, parsley, mint, and the crumbled feta cheese, to the couscous. I mixed everything up with a fork and seasoned with juice of half the lemon, some lemon zest, salt and pepper.
7. I cut the bell peppers in half lengthwise and removed the seeds and the white foamy bits on the inside with a spoon (mostly my fingers to be honest.) Then I stuffed them with the couscous mixture and lay them over the veggies on the roasting pan. I wrapped everything in aluminum foil and put it in the oven!
8. It was in the oven for about 45min and then I removed the foil and allowed it to cook for another 20min. uncovered.
9. My house was filled with the most divine, citrusy-peppery-feta-cheesy smell EVER as I took the time to wash up the dishes and watch some TV...

This experience has taught me a few things:

• Pine nuts are amazing little things. I have not often cooked with them, except in the odd pesto sauce when I am feeling inspired (which is not often), but these little guys were an AMAZING complement to this dish. Their nuttiness was a great addition to the flavor but, more importantly, their texture did wonders for this dish, which can be a little mushy otherwise! If I ever make stuffed bell peppers again, even if I am not following this recipe, I will try to add some kind of nut to the dish, for the crunch :)
• I have totally undervalued thyme in my cooking. This zesty, lemony little herb deserves more of my attention! I will try to get some for my herb garden, so I use it more often.
• If there was one thing that could be improved, it was the fact that a lot of water was left in the veggies... I like my roasted veggies a bit dryer, so I would uncover them a little earlier next time, to dry the dish out a bit more.
• More roasted garlic in my life, please! The soft, white garlic, slipping out of its silky skin with the slightest pressure from a knife or fork, YUM! I hadn't added this to my roasted veggies in way too long and it's time to bring it back!
• I remember the value of recipes! Even if I don't follow this to the letter ever again, I learned a lot about combining some of these mediterranean flavors and ingredients, and feel more confident I can make something awesome on my own next time ;)

Hmmm... my plate was full and now it's empty :D