vegan thanksgiving recipes part ii

This Thanksgiving recipe is pretty basic, but super yummy. Roasted root vegetables are healthy, flavorful, and very easy to cook. Adding sage and thyme really ties them into the rest of the Thanksgiving dish flavors. Use whatever winter root vegetables (or squash! and then let me know how that works out because I've never tried it!) make you happy. I just made this recipe up when I had a bunch of leftover root vegetables from another recipe, so it's by no means an exact science.

The important thing is chopping everything up to a size that enables everything to cook evenly. In general, carrots and parsnips will cook the fastest, followed by the sweet potatoes, and finally the regular potatoes. So I make sure to chop the carrots and parsnips a little bit larger than the potatoes. Also, make sure there's enough room in your casserole dish for every vegetable to be touching the bottom of the dish while roasting, and stir everything around mid-roast.

Roasted Root Vegetables

A healthy & easy side dish for the fall

Servings: 6

2 small or 1 large sweet potatoes

4 medium carrots

2 parsnips, peeled

2 small potatoes of your chosen variety

2 tablespoons olive oil

Dried sage, thyme, oregano, basil, rosemary (to taste - but go bigger with the sage than the other herbs)

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. Cut carrots and peeled parsnips into 1 - 1.5 inch pieces.

3. Cut sweet potatoes and regular potatoes into .5 - 1 inch pieces. (See photo above for relative veggie sizes)

4. In a large casserole dish, pour 1 tablespoon of olive oil and use a paper towel to coat the inside bottom and sides of the dish with oil.

5. Place all the veggies in the dish and drizzle with remaining oil. Sprinkle dried herbs as desired and use hands to mix everything together, coating the vegetables with oil and herbs.

6. Put casserole dish on middle rack of the oven for 40-50 minutes, or until fork tender. After the first 20 minutes, use a large spoon to stir the vegetables and expose different parts of them to the bottoms and sides of the dish.

7. Allow to cool briefly before serving. Keeps well and is tasty cold or reheated.

Coming up next: THE BEST STUFFING RECIPE EVER, and it just happens to be vegan. That is, if my father in law ever sends the damn recipe to me. But seriously guys, it's the best stuffing I have ever had in my entire life. Get ready.