Two for Tuesday: Roasted Vegetables and Marinated Steaks

Mmmmmm.....Roasted Veggies

My dear friend Christopher Robin made these for me for lunch on Thursday. In gratitude, I dragged her to the mall to look at jewelry to accessorize an outfit. (Well, not dragged, per se, since she towers over me, but mall shopping and accessorizing isn't her favorite thing.) See what I good friend I am?

Ingredients 

• 1 small butternut squash, cubed
• 1/2 red and 1/2 yellow bell peppers, seeded and diced
• 1 sweet potato, peeled and cubed
• 3 red potatoes, cubed
 • 1/2 red onion, quartered
• 1 package of mushrooms, quartered
• 3 heads of broccoli, cut into spears
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• salt and freshly ground black pepper

 Directions 

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F

 2. In a large bowl, combine the squash, sweet potato, and red potatoes. Separate the red onion quarters into pieces, and add half of them to the mixture.

3. In another bowl, combine the peppers, mushrooms, broccoli and the rest of the onion.

4. In a small bowl, stir together thyme, rosemary, olive oil, garlic, salt, and pepper. split in half and Toss with each bowl of vegetables until they are coated.

5. cover a large roasting pan with foil and spray it with pam. Pull of a piece of foil that could cover half the pan. 6. take the potato mix and spread evenly on half of the pan then, put the foil on top.

7. Roast for 25 minutes in the preheated oven, stirring every 10 minutes.

8. Add the other vegetables and move the foil to cover them. Roast for about another 20 min, stirring every 10. 

They were so good, I could not stop eating them!

Luckily, Christopher Robin didn't hold the shopping excursion against me and sent me home with the leftover veggies. I saved them and ate them as a side dish on the Jedi's birthday when I made...

Ta Da!

Marinated Rib-Eye Steaks

I found several recipes for a marinade, but I didn't have all the ingredients for any of them. So, I substituted without any rhyme or reason. Here's the recipe I started from. Here is what, I think, I made:

 Ingredients

•  1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 Tbs apple cider vinegar
• 2 Tbs Worcestershire sauce
• 2 Tbs low-sodium soy sauce
• 2 Tbs bbq sauce
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp onion powder
• 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
• some crushed dried basil (yeah, I was crushing from whole dried basil leaves so I didn't measure
• 1/2 tsp dried thyme
• 1/2 tsp dried rosemary
• 3 or 4 steaks (6 oz says the original recipe.)

Directions

1.  Put everything, except the steaks, in a bowl and stir.
2. Place the steaks in a non-reactive dish. (The original recipe says to pierce them on both sides first. I forgot that step. I leave you to decide whether or not to pierce your steaks.)
3. Pour the marinade over the steaks, flip and coat both sides.
4. Allow to marinade in the refrigerator for 3 to 4 hours. (Again, the original says to flip them halfway through. Do you think my steaks got flipped? They did not. I wasn't even home.)
5. Now, I don't have a grill. I have a smoker. Its a totally different piece of equipment. I cooked mine under a gas flame broiler. I used the drip pan (one with an upper pan with holes in it and a lower drip tray) and set the pan at the medium height. I broiled them for maybe 8 to 10 minutes on one side, flipped them, and broiled them for maybe 5 to 8 minutes on the other side. I didn't set a timer, so those are big maybes. 

They were delicious. This alleged thing called a grocery budget not withstanding, I think I need to have steak once a month. 

(In case you were wondering, I made baked potatoes and corn as a side dish for those unenlightened in my family who won't go for the roasted veggies. And I had homemade wheat bread on hand. I marinated three of our 6 steaks, in case my marinade was crap. I used a store bought steak rub on the other three. All of them turned out beautifully.)


And having had so much baking success recently (this is sarcasm, by the way), I'm tempted to try making my own English muffins. Still looking for an easy recipe. So far, this might be the best I've found. I'm going to follow the variation described in the second comment.