So last night I was very unmotivated and didn’t feel like doing anything major for dinner. For the past few months, whenever I’ve had this feeling I’ve ended up roasting what ever I have in my fridge at the time and mixing it with pasta or rice.  In the past I have combined my veggies with whole wheat penne and a home made marinara sauce. Last night I mixed it up a bit by making arborio rice with white wine.

I started by making the rice just using the instructions on the side of the box. I know its probably not the best starch to eat, but I don’t eat rice very often and brown rice isn’t really an adequate substitute in my opinion. When we were growing up we always had the most amazing white rice which I liked to melt a chunk of butter on top of. That changed at some point and we only had brown rice in the house during my teen years and beyond. No where near as delicious.

After I got the rice going I roughly chopped zucchini, red pepper, red onion, tomato, sweet potato, and (my favorite thing to roast) garlic. I combined my vegetables in a bowl with EVO, sea salt and pepper. I roasted them in the oven (400 degrees for 30 mins).

When I took them out of the oven I combined everything but the sweet potato and garlic with the rice. The wine gives the rice a great depth of flavor that it generally lacks. Roasting vegetables is by FAR the best way to eat them. It intensifies the flavor that they already naturally have while remaining fairly healthy.

I set aside the sweet potato because I love sweet potato sliced thinly and roasted with garlic. It gives them the appearance and taste of a french fry but they’re much healthier. The garlic gives the potato extra flavor. I top it off with Balsamic Vinegar.

Paula Deen is on the Food Network right now. I love her. Shes such a joyful person. Not sure what I’m doing tonight for dinner. I just ran so right now I think I will stand over my sink eating an entire package of edamame.