We're roasting!

I wish I was talking about the temperature outside, but it is another overcast, rainy day here.  Where is the warm sunshine?!?!  I need it to ripen my strawberries and tomatoes and to warm up the pool!

But, since it is so cool and blah outside, it was a perfect day for making a meal out of roasted vegetables.  Had the oven on for a long time but it didn't even matter on a day like today! Until it came time to make the ice cream and the kitchen was toasty warm (I know, I know - making ice cream on a dreary day ... I am a little mixed up with the dessert portion of the meal!  But I had all the strawberries I needed to use up!).

The meal was inspired by two things: 1. the beets we got at the farm where we picked strawberries on the weekend and 2. this recipe for roasted vegetable strudel that I needed to try out.

I love roasted beets in the fall with other root vegetables, but I also love them roasted whole and then peeled, chopped, and chilled in a spinach (or mixed baby greens) salad with goat cheese and pistachios in the spring and summer.  I also toss in red onion.  And I think once I used some deliciously fresh peas from the farmer's market.  The dressing is always a version of my basic olive oil, vinegar of choice (tonight it was a mix of balsamic and apple cider), and dijon mustard.  Sometimes I add a squeeze of lime juice and/or grated jalapeno and/or honey.  Tonight I didn't add any of those.  Just a sprinkle of salt and pepper.

 

Next up was the strudel.  I had all sorts of ideas of what vegetables to combine, but I went with what was on sale (NO way was I paying $1.78 for a red pepper.  Not. a. chance.) - green and yellow zucchini, eggplant, and onions.  I had goat cheese and Parmesan cheese (NOT the stinky feet smelling stuff from the shakers on the shelf at the grocery store, but some much fresher and tastier stuff from Trader Joe's.  Would have been even better with freshly grated, but I didn't have any and couldn't justify the cost when I had this other container to use up right now), so that made my cheese decision easy, too.  I diced the veggies up, tossed them with olive oil and a little salt, and roasted them until they were soft and sweet and delicious before rolling them up in 6 layers of buttery phyllo goodness and baking the whole log for about 20 minutes.

I decided I needed to do a roasted tomato marinara of sorts to try to get as close to the original recipe as I could, so I roasted up some gorgeous and on sale tomatoes and a few cloves or garlic to blend up.  I only used half of the eggplant for the strudel, and figured it would not get a lot of attention in the drawer of the fridge, so I decided to make a pseudo baba ganouj with the ingredients I had on hand.  I roasted the eggplant half, scooped out the soft and mushy flesh, and blended it with some lemon juice, parsley (right out of our herb garden - LOVE having this!), garlic, salt, and sour cream (would have used Greek yogurt but only had strawberry flavored!).  Both sauces/dips turned out really delicious!  Gotta love it when that happens.

So this was our roasted vegetable dinner!
And don't for a second think the kids ate this, too.  Ha!  This time, I knew better than to even attempt to offer it to them.  This was a meal for the adults.  I made them mac and cheese.  The boxed kind.  Yup!  It was Annie's organic and not Kraft, if that makes it any better?!?!  And they had carrots, too.  And Leighton ate beets.  Lots and lots of beets.  He was trying to make his pee pink!  Riley "no like it" though.  Oh well, more for me!

There are so many roasted fruit desserts I could have made.  Something with apples and phyllo would have been delicious.  But, I needed to get the strawberries from the weekend finished up before they all went bad.  And I had promised the kids ice cream.  So, that's what I made.  I used my tried and true recipe from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop.