It's Working!

The whole point of me starting on this quest is to learn to like vegetables. I figured I would have to try a lot of recipes with a lot of ingredients to get to the point where I would enjoy the actual vegetable.

I've blogged already about a broccoli recipe that I really liked with brown sugar and parmesan cheese.

I blogged about sprinkling the brown sugar and parmesan cheese on frozen meal broccoli.

Today, I took another big step. I omitted the brown sugar.

It might not sound like much, but to me, that was a major victory. I'm getting to the point where I can start omitting the extra ingredients and still enjoy the vegetable itself. I'm not saying I'm going to be eating raw broccoli or plain steamed broccoli anytime soon - but it was a little reinforcement that maybe I'm doing this right!

This week's menu is getting mixed up a little bit but the vegetables should stay the same. Tonight's going to be pizza casserole but still with the green bean and mushroom medley. I'm expecting high marks on this one because although it contains carrots, I absolutely love green beans and mushrooms :)

Herbed Mushrooms with White Wine

Okay so maybe this one is cheating. I love mushrooms, so it's not that hard for me to find ways to fix them that I like. But the point is, I guess, that I haven't been eating my veggies like I should so I'm making more of an effort now.

Herbed Mushrooms with White Wine

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 1/2 pounds fresh mushrooms
• 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
• 1/4 cup dry white wine
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives

Directions

1. Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat. Place mushrooms in the skillet, season with Italian seasoning, and cook 10 minutes, stirring frequently.
2. Mix the wine and garlic into the skillet, and continue cooking until most of the wine has evaporated. Season with salt and pepper, and sprinkle with chives. Continue cooking 1 minute.

I pretty much followed this one as written, except I didn't add salt or pepper. I know that seems to be a trend with me - I rarely do add salt but I will add pepper quite a bit. None of these recipes so far really seemed to need pepper though. If I felt like there was something missing, it didn't seem to be pepper.

Last night was actually the second time I made this. The first time I used whole mushrooms - they were good, but they did take longer to cook and weren't quite as good as last night, when I used sliced mushrooms. The recipe doesn't specify but a dinner guest with the whole mushrooms suggested he thought they would be better sliced. I agreed and now that I've done it both ways, sliced is better.

I give it an A!

Amount Per Serving  Calories: 57 | Total Fat: 2.7g | Cholesterol: 0mg

Oven-Roasted Asparagus

I swear I'm going to try more than just asparagus. I still had half the bunch left from the night before though and have read that asparagus doesn't really keep well. I made a lot of changes on this recipe but I still thought it was better than the night before's.

Oven-Roasted Asparagus

Ingredients

• 1 bunch thin asparagus spears, trimmed
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 1/2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese (optional) - I used...
• 1 clove garlic, minced (optional) - I used...
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice (optional) I used...

Directions

1. Preheat an oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). I preheated to 325 only because I was making cranberry chicken and that was the temperature it called for.
2. Place the asparagus into a mixing bowl, and drizzle with the olive oil. Toss to coat the spears, then sprinkle with Parmesan cheese, garlic, salt, and pepper. Arrange the asparagus onto a baking sheet in a single layer.
3. Bake in the preheated oven until just tender, 12 to 15 minutes depending on thickness. Sprinkle with lemon juice just before serving.

These were pretty thick spears and I had the temperature lower than 425 so they ended up cooking for about 20 minutes. The texture was pretty much perfect. I love green beans and they had the same texture as perfectly cooked green beans. I think the garlic really added to the flavor. Monday night's aspargus was similar to this recipe but the garlic gave it an extra savoriness (is that even a word?).  I also took the suggestion of a commenter on this recipe and covered the cookie sheet with aluminum foil. I think it kept the excess oil from going everywhere and it made cleanup much quicker.

I'll definitely make this again. I give it an A!

Calories: 123 | Total Fat: 10.8g | Cholesterol: 2mg