I found myself at the market earlier today, and by market, I mean Farmer's Pride, the teensy little grocery store on the corner of Chicago and Western. This is where I buy 93% of my groceries, as they have a very extensive list of items, which 93% of the time, meet all of my demanding culinary needs. They sell locally baked bread, delicious corned beef and/or roast beef, which is found at the deli, as well as bottles of pasta sauce, packaged gnocchi, and cans of Monster energy drink! That pretty much sums up the contents of my usual shopping basket.
There is also a decent produce section in the main part of the store as well as one which is located in a little room to the right of the checkout counter. I know this, because I pass by it when I make the impulse decision to purchase potato chips or soda pop, which are located on the wall opposite the nutritious stuff.
Anyway, the point of me blogging all this exciting information, is that today, I skipped over the pop and the chips and decided to fill my basket with a beautiful fresh bounty of vegetables, no doubt, shipped straight to Chicago from some local farmer in Guatemala or Peru. Only the freshest produce for this food blogger! Having a bit more time on my hands than usual these days, I thought it would be a good idea to roast some veggies for dinner, and my goodness, what a great idea that turned out to be. Perhaps I should have written, my greatness, but in hindsight, that seems a bit douchey...I'll save it for another blog.
So I got home and a few hours later, I found myself chopping up asparagus, cauliflower, garlic, onion, red peppers, green peppers, yellow squash, and of course, mushrooms. The scent of vegetables was not in the air, as they were just chopped vegetables, so they didn't really smell like much. Except the onions, those smelled a bit and were irritating my eyes, so I dumped them into a covered bowl. Anyway combine all the veggies in a big bowl, dump on some extra virgin olive oil, sprinkle on some salt and pepper, and shake somewhat vigorously for twenty seconds or so. Now you can skimp out and choose to use another type of oil, but I wouldn't recommend it. Extra virgin olive oil is the best type to use for roasted veggies, as it's the only kind that my roommate has in the apartment. However, if your roommate does not have any oil in the apartment, you're shit out of luck and might have to go buy some yourself or ask said roommate that you'd appreciate it if they'd run to the store for some. Do not and I repeat, do not offer up roasted veggies as a trade for the oil. It's not worth it. The veggies are way too delicious to be sharing with that a-hole.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees (I guessed), toss the mixed up veggies on a couple of lined cookie trays, and insert into your convection oven. Now my oven is both conventional and convectional, so perhaps you won't have that luxury. Also, I don't think convectional is a word, but this is a food blog, so I'm not going to bother researching that. I think you all understand that I'm busy eating delicious roasted vegetables and really don't have time for nonsense like Google.
So here's what you get if you do this correctly...
Holy Lord...I hope the preview of this picture is not accurate, because it doesn't look nearly as beautiful as I recall. Those are red peppers, not pieces of pumpkin.
So there you have it! Delicious roasted vegetables. And one more note, before I bid you adieu...if you line the trays with parchment paper, don't place it on top of the stove next to a boiling pot of water, as it's very, very likely that it will catch on fire and cause the smoke alarm to activate. Also if you do by chance do that, it's best to not have the dishwasher open with the trays pulled out as that will definitely block your path to the sink if you're wanting to put out the fire.
Well have a great day everyone! I hope you've enjoyed my first attempt at food blogging. It's probably going to be the last as well.
Bon A Petiet!
