We've almost made it! The sun is shining, the snow is melting, the birds are chirping and the maple trees have been tapped and the maple water is flowing. We are almost through winter and with that, root vegetable season.
I am almost tempted to start counting down the days until wild leek and fiddlehead season (I'm guessing 45 days).
And so, as we are on the cusp of fresh greens popping up from the earth, I will say farewell to the wonderland of winter with this last hurrah with the root vegetables.
The truth of it is that I have been travelling a lot this winter and in the three weeks between my sweet holiday in Costa Rica in January and my most recent biz trip in California, I filmed nearly 40 videos for my Culinary Nutrition Expert program. And so my diet for those three weeks consisted of what I had made for the shoots that week. There was a lot of food. And I don't ever want to see it wasted.
And so, when we got back late Monday night and I opened the fridge, all we had was a bag of parsnips and carrots and one little lemon, sitting all alone.
And I thought -- I can work with this. They say desperation is the mother of creation...Wait, do they? Well, I say limitations (and a hint of desperate hunger) is the seed for simple and great recipe creation. Here I present to you a simple, but flavourful, colourful and delicious roasted root medley, which falls perfectly in line with all that makes this UnDiet Life so vibrant.
When using root veggies, give them a good scrub down but keep the skin on. Root veggies grow underground and that, my dear friend, is where the minerals in our food come from -- the soil! So if we're kicking it with organic root veggies, grown in mineral-rich soil, that outer area of the vegetable is where the highest concentration of mineral power will be found.
I flavoured the carrots and parsnips with fresh ground cumin and coriander seeds, drizzled on the juice of a whole lemon, tossed in some olive and sea salt and then popped them in to roast for 45 minutes.
A key trick is that I toss the vegetables in a bowl and then lay them out on the parchment. Any leftover lemon/olive oil in the bowl gets poured over the roots once they're already laid out. This lends to a little more tasty caramelizing.
These are a most perfect way to enjoy the last of the root vegetable season and you can use the same mix with any of your favourite root vegetables.
Lemon Cumin Roasted Carrots
Yield: 4 servings
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 45 minutes
Total Time: 55 minutes
Ingredients
Make It Like So
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