Time to clear out the freezer!

By Dr. Elizabeth George

​My husband and I were getting the garden ready to plant today.  (This early we can put in the spinach, lettuce and potatoes).  We got the fence mended (we have deer friends and worse, we have a dog, Frodo, who loves to dig up potatoes and eat them!)

​That got me to realizing that the summer crop will be coming in before too long, and I haven’t used everything in the freezer.  Well, lets make a dent in it tonight.  Frozen veggies roast just as easily as fresh – though this is the first I’m trying my frozen potatoes.   ​I gathered up my broccoli, heirloom string beans, potatoes and kale from the freezer. (I also set out a frozen tomatoe sauce – it will work well later this week to add to leftovers –and , yum, throw in some Quinoa).

 Also I set out fresh carrots, cabbage, onions, zucchini, sun chokes, The sunchokes were discovered today as we turned the soil over – a whole bucket. (more about sunchokes later).  So since some of the veggies are frozen and chunked together, we’ll start those first on a slightly lower temperature – 300 * and set timer for 30 minutes, and start to write this blog. When I’m starting with all fresh veggies, I usually roast them at 350 . 

​Meanwhile, I’ll also chop up the fresh veggies.  Also, I’ll get the frozen veggies out of the oven in about 15 minutes and see if they can be cut a little smaller. 

​When I got the veggies out – the broccoli and green beans were well thawed – potatoes still frozen in the center.  So I cut the potatoes smaller (they were thawed enough to cut) and put them in a corning dish by themselves for about 10 minutes while I washed and sliced the sun chokes.  

Sun chokes add a nice zing to potatoes dishes – kind of like parsnips and turnips and kohlrabi do.  They are also yummy slivered raw on most any kind of salad – they add a nice crunch and flavor.  I cut the carrots in 1- inch pieces – they’re slow cooking so smaller is better. I noticed the onion was actually a scallion (?) – slivered it and spread it over the rest so the flavor could sink in. ​

​And then I opened the spice drawer and looked around to see what inspired me. Oregano jumped out first – shake it on, then cumin, and then dill seemed right and finally pepper.  I’m not entirely sure how I decided on these – and we’ll see how they taste!   Finally I topped it with some garbanzo beans – but didn’t have as many as I wanted, so I opened some lentils and added a cup.  Also I got the frozen kale out and broke off a handful and crumbled it on top of everything; it will come out crispy and delicious. I put it back in the convection oven at 300. (Notice that I did not add any oil to all this. I prefer to get my healthy plant fats from the plants themselves – rather than expressed and extracted into an oil with nutrients and fiber missing.  And the bonus is, it’s soooo easy to clean the dishes!

​While it’s cooking I’ll make some notes about adding the legumes – garbanzo beans and lentils.  They are a wonderful source of protein, magnesium, iron and fiber and many other nutrients.   They help diabetics (or anyone for that matter) regulate their blood sugar.  Also, they help your blood vessels produce nitric oxide which helps arteries relax, “vasodilate”, be “unsticky”, and reduces inflammation; all of this is wonderful of course for your circulatory system and everything it serves – AKA your whole body!  Of course every veggie in this dish with all their different colors adds potassium, a variety of vitamins and other antioxidants, minerals, fibers and more than we’ll ever know!!

​Time to taste!!   A yummy success – what’s really cool is I can taste the distinctive flavor of each of the different veggies and beans, while they all go well together.  Also, all the different veggies maintained their own textures – some are crisper than others, nice!.   Tomorrow night I’ll cook some of these up with Farro and that yummy tomatoe sauce thawed from last summer.

Coming soon on our next blog "The standing desk!"