Easy Peasy Vegetables

Meat & Vegetables….that is pretty much what we eat for lunch & dinner. I am most interested in shortening my time in the kitchen and I keep the meat dishes simple by grilling, baking, and frying (gasp!). OK, sauteeing or stir-frying sounds much healthier – right?

What about them veggies? We like our cooked veggies on the crispy crunchy side and here are two ‘recipes’ for some quick veggie dishes. I don’t call them side dishes because we eat them in quantities similar to the quantity of meat.

ROASTED ASPARAGUS (eat it up while its cheap around the Easter holiday)
Line a cookie sheet with foil and pour 1-2 T of good extra virgin olive oil (more or less to your taste)
Fresh Asparagus – cut 1-2″ off the bottom or snap each piece off. I leave the big rubberbands in place while I’m chopping off the end. One fell swoop of the blade – done. Wash the spears.
Place on cookie sheet and sprinkle with garlic salt. Roll, flip, toss the spears around until equally coated with the oil.
Bake in your 400* oven for 5-10 minutes.
Serve and eat with your fingers (It is OK, Miss Manners approves) 🙂

STEAMED BROCCOLI oh, how boring, you say?
Cut broccoli into desired size & wash
Place in pot with no more than 1″ of water, olive oil, garlic, any kind of pepper, and a dash of red pepper flakes. Cover the pot and give it several good shakes to mix the water & oil and coat the broccoli.
Steam a couple minutes, stirring once or twice.
**With a bit longer cooking time, this method also works for baby carrots. Change the spices to more green herbs like dill or rosemary or go with pumpkin pie kind of spices and use real butter instead of olive oil. I am going to try this with some organic coconut oil. Yum

See? “Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy”

Where did that phrase come from? After a brief wiki-beware sort of search; it purportedly comes from a UK dish detergent commercial for Lemon Squeezy. I also read that it developed into a schoolyard taunt of sorts, “Easy Peasy Japanesy, wash your bum in Lemon Squeezy”. British humor, ya know.