It may be 72 degrees in St. Louis today, but the multicolored leaves decorating the ground and the crisp nights tell a very different story. It's November, y'all! We are fully into fall with its jackets, bonfires, short days and invigoratingly cool nights.
A huge part of fall for me, and many of you I imagine, is the accompanying big ol' pots of warm and gooey comfort food. Thanks to HUBS' folks I got the chance to cook something new on Sunday. They have a rather large garden, and brought over several things when they visited the day before, including a butternut squash and some spinach fettuccine that they had tried but weren't crazy about (for some reason).
I adapted this recipe from Redbook where it was only meant for roasted butternut squash. I increased the recipe a bit to accommodate the greater number of veggies I used.
Balsamic Honey Roasted Veggies
1 medium Butternut Squash, peeled and cut in chunks
5 Yukon Gold Potatoes, cut in chunks
8 ounces Baby Carrots, cut in half lengthwise
1 medium Onion, sliced
3 to 4 tablespoons each Balsamic Vinegar, Honey and Olive Oil
Salt & Pepper
Get your oven to 425 degrees. Spray a roasting dish with cooking spray and start tossing veggies in. Once you get a full layer of mixed veggies, drizzle them with 1 tablespoon each of balsamic, honey and olive oil then sprinkle with some salt and pepper. Keep layering until you get all your veggies in the pan and stir things up a bit to make sure everything gets covered in the goodness.
This will take about 40 minutes in the oven to get good and done. If you take the pan out and the juices got stuck to the bottom, never fear, my friends! Add water to the pan (with the veggies still in there) swirl it around and in a few minutes the heat and water will loosen all that flavor and create a nice sauce for the veggies. We poured the result over the spinach fettuccine and sprinkled on a little grated Parmesan/Asiago/Romano blended cheese.
HUBS' mom also brought us a portion of a homemade chocolate cake on Saturday, which we promptly finished in two days. Since I am dessert's bitch, I needed something else sweet on Monday, and made the easiest peanut butter chocolate chip cookies I've ever seen. They also turned out incredibly flaky, moist and delicious.
Don't you love cooking and baking and the St. Louis Cardinals winning the World Series against all odds? Don't you?
