I changed my eating habits a few years back and part of that was to start cooking all my own food. I just cannot trust restaurants to use quality ingredients and not to add extra preservatives to enhance shelf life. As a result I have a cooking routine that happens just about weekly. I take an hour or so out of my day to prep my weeks worth of vegetables to eat. Some people will cook on the fly, making only what they need at the time. Though I find this quite time consuming, so by cooking my vegetables at once and then warming them up while in demand it works better for my schedule.
Honestly I did not have a very good setup in the beginning, having plastic storage containers was not ideal. And I did not have a full sized oven. Though now I have nice containers, and a powerful oven I can make everything in one go. Normally this will last me a week, I tend to eat alot of vegetables making the portions of my plate mostly them.
It all starts at the market, we buy our vegetables preferably from our local farmers market. Though in this weeks purchase we just got them from a local supermarket. Buying vegetables from your local farmer is the way to go, I highly suggest it. Or even better, grow your own!
Making some space on my counter I line up my oven glass ware, mostly Anchor and Pyrex. Though not everything will be cooked in them, for example starchy items like potatoes and carrots. Scrubbing them is quite the pain, so for those starchy foods I just use some disposable foil and a pan.
Our local trip to the supermarket includes a store called Aldi's. And its been a favorite of ours to shop at. You can go there and find amazing deals. Just do not go there expecting to find a certain something. We got amazing deals on duck breasts, nearly half off and many other great finds too. Just make sure to bring a quarter to use their shopping carts and bring your own bags too.
I start off cutting up the brussels sprouts, they tend to burn easily so I will place cut up onions on top later. There is a balance to layering, making sure everything comes out cooked just right.
Using some large peppers I core them out and remove all the seeds. They can make a mess, so I try to keep them attached to the core. Or tap the cored out peppers over the sink to knock out the hundreds of little pepper seeds.
I cut them up and place them in a small Pyrex dish. Any glass dish works as long as they are oven safe.
The cauliflower is up next, chopping all that up. And removing the stem from the flower.
Onions are last, as they make my eyes burn. They will cover the brussels sprouts to keep them from burning so easily.
I use the old pepper bag to put food trash like wrappers and the unused parts of the vegetables.
The red potatoes go on foil, otherwise I have to scrub the glass until my fingers go numb.. lol
We cook it all at 400F though I will pull out the broccoli early. The potatoes will take the longest to cook.
With all my raw vegetables lined up they are ready for spices. I put them all on before they go in the oven.
My choice spices is garlic, salt, black pepper, turmeric and italian seasoning.
I sprinkle them on the vegetables and make sure the potatoes get completely covered by it.
Ready for the oven, just need it to finish warming up.
Looking at the dish with the brussels sprouts we can see how the onions cover most of it. This has come with experience learning how some of them cook much faster than the others. But if you combine them right they will cook evenly.
A nice full oven, glad to have this. When doing a lot of cooking a full sized oven is truly the workhorse of the kitchen.
After 45 minutes everything is ready. Using my granite counter top they cool rapidly.
The broccoli came out first and then all the other vegetables and finally the potatoes.
Its all very hot so I let it cool on my granite island.
Looking at the brussels sprouts we can see they did not burn too bad.
Honestly I overcooked the potatoes a little, they are going to be crunchy. I normally like them a little less cooked than this, but its fine I will get through them. Just glad I do not need to scrub glass ware to get out potato starch.
The glass containers come in a set, I bought mine on Amazon. Bought two sets as I need alot of containers for all my cooking. I also store my smoked and BBQ'ed meat, my cooked beans, rice and soups. So I got a bunch of them.
The storage containers I use can be fully cleaned. I find the gaskets need to be removed and cleaned a few times a year. I just use a wet cloth and wipe down the gaskets, they clean really easily.
I moved my vegetables into their containers, little bit of each. Sometimes I need to grab an additional glass storage container but this time I got it just right. You do not want to over fill them as you can bruise the vegetables.
Having glass ware is much better than plastic. After six or so months of using plastic it becomes hard to clean.
The potatoes are placed in their own storage container as well. And the foil can just be thrown away.
And finally it is time to eat, I BBQed some NY strip steak and had them with my vegetables. Sauerkraut is added as I like fermented vegetables. Also had some home made mayonnaise along with some store bought mustard. I need to give that a try making it myself as well. Its probably similar to making mayo which is something I do on a regular basis as well.