Saturday, November 23, 2013

Roasted Veggies and Bean Bake

Lately I've been trying to balance my plate at meals by selecting a grain, a vegetable, and a bean dish.

While this plate isn't much to look at, it turned out to be very satisfying and tasty. 

For the grain dish I made brown rice and quinoa. 

The bean dish was an onion and white bean bake.

And for the roasted veggies I did asparagus, onion, zuchinni, green bell pepper, and fennel. In the past I have shied away from fennel. I'm not a fan of licorice flavor and I was afraid that it would ruin whatever dish I threw it in. But, because I've been making it a habit to try news foods when I saw it at the grocery store I thought "Hey, why not." 

I grabbed the smallest bulb and headed home. 

My idea was to add it to roasted veggies and if I ended up not liking it I could just eat around it. 

While the veggies were in the oven I started to get nervous....the house was starting to smell like licorice!

The timer went off and I pulled the pan out of the oven and glanced at the fennel dubiously.

I let the veggies cool a bit and I snuck a taste of the fennel. To my surprise I really liked it! There wasn't the overpowering flavor of licorice, like I had expected. It had just the slightest hint of it and, it was closer to an onion than I had expected. Now I'm excited to cook with it again and I'm already thinking of dishes I want to try with it!!!


"We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." - Walt Disney