What is NaBloPoMo you say? It's National Blog Posting Month and it was started last year by Mrs. Kennedy as a bloggy response to NaNoWriMo. I didn't participate last year, but this year I'm all over it.
I figured that since I try to post almost daily (barring weekends) it wouldn't be too much of a stretch. And, since I'm about to kick off the new CityMama, I figured this would be a good way to transition to my more "food story"-focused blog. I'll still blog my regular melange of craziness, but for the month of November, I'll also include super-easy recipes, too.
Many people organize their posts around a theme for NaBloPoMo, and my theme is making parents' lives easier by providing tasty, yummy, easy recipes for you. If you want to cook at home more for whatever the reason, I'm here to help. I'm setting a personal goal of "easy" being defined 6 ingredients or less (not including salt, pepper, or water) because why make complicated recipes a barrier to cooking?
I encourage you to share your favorites as well, and I'm working on ways to make this month an audience participation month as much as possible. (And I haven't forgotten about the Project: Life Change and tagline prizes...those are coming up, I promise! Oh, and the prizes will be minus the Dog memorabilia because who knew he was such a d!ck.)
So without further ado, here is recipe numero uno to kick off the month of November!
ROASTED ROOT VEGETABLE AND POTATO SALAD
(Adapted from a recipe I posted in July 2005.)
One of the great things about this recipe is that while the vegetables are roasting, you can do other things like prepare the rest of the meal, bathe the kids, nurse the baby, etc. If you are vegetarian or vegan this is a great main dish along with green salad and a loaf of crusty bread. It could also be part of a salad buffet.
- 2 carrots, scrubbed but not peeled, diced into chunky batons
- 6 Yukon gold potatoes, diced into large cubes
- an onion, chopped
- a head of garlic broken up and unpeeled
- olive oil
- very coarse salt and pepper (freebie)
- aged balsamic vinegar
Preheat oven to 350º. Place potatoes, carrots, onion, and garlic in a roasting pan and drizzle generously with olive oil. Toss. Sprinkle with coarse salt and grind pepper over. Cover pan loosely with foil. Roast covered for 20 minutes then remove foil and roast a further 20-30 minutes. Remove from oven and then drizzle veggies with balsamic vinegar—not too much—2-3 times around the pan with your thumb over the opening of the bottle so vinegar flows out in a thin stream. Toss, transfer to serving dish. Devour.
Parsnips, rutabagas, and/or beets would also be very tasty in this, as would a mixture of different colored potatoes. Fresh parsley to garnish would also be pretty and yummy.
