Holy smokes! Roasted veggies

This stuff was so good, I ate it all up before I remembered to take a photo.

Anyway, I made roasted veggies with fettuccine pasta tonight for dinner.

I'd been reading a lot of food bloggers who talk about all the ways to roast veggies. Basically, you cut up your veggies, toss them with oil, salt and pepper, spread them on a cookie sheet, and bake for 30 minutes at 350, or 20 minutes at 400-450, or 10 minutes at 500.

What veggies or other flavorings you use seem to vary according to the tastes of individuals and what was on sale at the farmer's market, or what was being produced by the truckload by the single squash plant in the garden.

Anyway, my Mom gave me a couple bags of bell peppers, chili peppers, jalapenos, and tomatoes last time I was over there. It was originally to make salsa. I made salsa, and it was indeed good, but I had some veggies left over.

So this afternoon I made a marinade of:

1 cup water
1 Tablespoon cider vinegar
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp basil
1 tsp kosher salt
1 minced garlic clove (1 tsp powdered?)
small handful of diced onion (2 tsp minced?)
1/2 tsp black pepper

Then I just chopped my two small tomatoes, two small bell peppers, a jalapeno and a chili, because I was doubtful about their actual heat content. I tossed them all in a bag with the marinade and let it sit for an hour.

Notice there's no oil. It's because I ran out. But in my research, I discovered that if you cook veggies in the oven without oil on them, the outside of the vegetable stays at 212 degrees, no matter the heat of the oven, and all the moisture inside dries out, leaving you with limp, grody vegetables. (Quoted verbatim from Gluten-Free Girl.)

So I did the next best thing.

I stir-fried them in melted butter before putting them on the cookie sheet. And it wasn't butter. It was that mysterious butter-like substance called Blue Bonnet. Some sort of weird vegetable oil spread like margarine, I think. Anyway, I only fried it for about a minute. Just long enough to toss everything real good.

Then I spread out my veggies on a cookie sheet and hosed them down with a layer of cooking spray, just to be safe.

Twenty minutes later they smelled divine. I don't like mixed vegetables, as a rule. Especially not when raw tomatoes are involved. But man, this came off that cookie sheet with delicious black burned specks all over it, and the vinegar marinade had instilled a deep tang, and the butter stir-fry had turned to a browned butter coating.

We tossed it with fettuccine noodles, some Parmesan and some diced cubes of Colby Jack, sucked it down, and looked for more.

I need to start making a lot more noodles, for one thing.

And Mom, I need more veggies. I'll even take squash. As long as I peel the zucchini, nobody will know what it is! *rubs hands together*