Vegetables, I Love You!

This past week was a long one... Work stress, a cooking misadventure (these things happen, it's part of learning), leaving work due to a terrible awful migraine that turned me into some sort of monster within 15 minutes after the onset, stress eating in the form of Doritos, and falling apart right before a very important meeting.

However, life can't be that bad, right? I am alive after all. Happiness comes in the form of walks and workouts squeezed in during lunch breaks, an unplanned pizza date night, falling asleep in pigeon pose during a home yoga practice due to sheer exhaustion, a yoga class with a friend, finding a slice of leftover TG day pumpkin bread, a pick me up note from my mentor/partner teacher after a tough day at work, and a Margarita waiting for me on the kitchen counter on a Friday night.

Happiness also comes in the form of Christmas elves. By the way, that cute little thing is Elfie, our fish. 

 

So, during what felt like an endless week, I was so happy that cooking was the least of my worries. Thank you self for roasting and cooking all the vegetables last weekend. My work days were powered by the roasted potatoes. I ate them for lunch every day, along with the delicious garlicky kale. Whoever said vegetables should always be eaten hot or warm? I ate mine cold, straight out of my lunch container and it was wonderful!

Last Monday, I wrote about all the vegetables that were roasted and cooked the day before and promised to share whatever special things I decide to do with them later in the week. Well, as mentioned above, I ate the potatoes cold without heating them nor adding anything in, and they were delicious! The sautéed kale was used on an open face sandwich, topped with mozzarella, heated in the oven just until the mozzarella melted. That was one of the best cheese sandwiches I have ever had. It was so simple but so tasty… kale really is an amazing vegetable. It doesn’t need anything more than a good douse of olive oil, some garlic, salt and pepper.
 

Tamar Adler is still in my head and inspired by the knowledge I am gaining from her book (yup, still reading it), I sliced the cold, roasted Brussels sprouts into ribbons, added a drizzle of olive oil, squeezed some lemon juice, and tossed it well. I heated a small amount of rice vinegar to rehydrate dried cranberries and tossed in a small handful of sliced onions to soak in the warm vinegar for about 10 minutes. The cranberries and onions, along with the vinegar were then poured on the Brussels and tossed with a handful of slivered almonds. It was a very good salad of salty, roasted Brussels sprouts with a tangy bite, sweetened cranberries, and crunchy almonds.

 

If you are overwhelmed by the vegetables sitting in your refrigerator, pull them out and cook them all at once. Roast them, sauté them, boil them! Doing all these at once is a great thing. You have a whole bunch of already excellent cooked food and now have the power to do whatever you want with them with barely any work. These cooked veggies can be tossed together with other ingredients to make a salad. Some vegetables can be sliced thin and added in sandwiches. Others can be chopped into small pieces and plopped on omelets. Or, everything can just be thrown together in a big pot with some vegetable/chicken stock and perhaps some coconut milk to make a soup or curry.

On this gorgeous Sunday, roast and cook your vegetables, bake some cookies, go on a hike, do some yoga, maybe make some Christmas elves. 

Have a blessed day my friends!