Roasted Winter Veg

    A winter staple for me is what I think of as my Roasted Winter Veg. I invented it last fall, as a vegan entree for my youngest brother's wedding reception. My brother is a chef and cheesemaker, his wife is a baker, and his friends are all foodies, many of whom are vegan. The Roasted Veggies were a huge hit. I tweak the recipe every time I make it, depending on the vegetables at hand. Three must haves though, are yams, beets, and apples. Okay, I know, apples are not a vegetable, let's not argue the fact. So here is the basic recipe:

Peel and cut into 3/4"-ish cubes:
3 large yams, 3 medium beets, 1 apple, about 1 cup of winter squash (Delicata, Blue Hubbard, Acorn, sweet heirloom pumpkin, etc...).
Also: 1 cup organic baby carrots, 1 small, thinly sliced sweet onion.
Pile into a bowl, drizzle with 2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil, 2 tablespoons honey or agave syrup or maple syrup (or don't add any sweetener, if you don't want to). Sprinkle with about 2 teaspoons sea salt. Toss together until everything is nicely coated with the oil.
Put in a lightly oiled casserole dish of proper size, shallow and wide is better than deep. Bake at 400 until it looks kind of overbaked. I like it to cook long enough to start caramelizing. This can take 2 to 3 hours. If you want it just cooked through, 1 to 1-1/2 hours is plenty.

This recipe is easy to tweak with whatever winter veggies you like, and you can add all kinds of deliciousness like dried fruit (dried cherries are amazing in this) or nuts.
If you want to be a little naughty and throw veganism to the wind; crisp, crumbled bacon really adds to the sweet/salty/savory awesomeness.

This dish holds over very well, and is easy to take to potluck events. I will nosh on this for days.

Introducing The New Blog

    Despite the fact that I am already barely managing to keep on top of my other blogs, I've been told too many times that I should start writing about food. If there is one place I feel confident, happy, and productive it is my kitchen. These last few years, as my body has gone through changes, intentional and otherwise, my concept of  "good food" has altered dramatically. Whole foods, quality ingredients, simply prepared to fuel my body, satiate my appetite, and soothe my soul. I train hard, workout obsessively, am hungry most of the time, and eat a lot. I need rocket fuel, not dirty coal, to fuel the machine that is me. I have become a tad obsessed about eating pure, organic, non-GMHO foods, and not polluting my body with chemicals. I avoid processed and prepackaged foods, avoiding anything with the demon High Fructose Corn Syrup. To make matters more complicated, I have developed various food intolerances. Dairy has become the enemy, in most of its forms, thankfully butter and cheese are not too problematic, but milk and yogurt tear me up. Wheat, in most forms, cause heartburn, which is inflammation. I have nearly cut meat from my diet, and am disinclined to consume most animal proteins, although I've been using eggs lately, to up my protein intake as I recover from a long, hard season of racing. Just recently I have discovered a nut allergy that was never a problem until I began eating a lot of nuts as a high calorie protein source. The long and short, I neurotically read labels, have to avoid a number of common foods, and therefore, it is just a damned sight easier to cook everything from scratch.
    So after a lifetime of being able to cook and eat damn near anything and everything, I am now having to alter old favorites, and create new favorites. This particular blog will be an attempt to chronicle my recipes, if you can call my handful-of-this-pinch-of-that way of creating to fall into the category of "recipes." I am hoping that this will make me more inclined to pay attention to what I do, maybe actually measure just how much "a handful" is.
    That is it in a nutshell. A chance to document what I create in my beautiful kitchen, to shovel into my gaping maw.