Roasted broccoli

I was one of those weird kids who always loved vegetables. I'd go over to a friend's house and would eat whatever fancy vegetable the parents were eating and ignore the kid-friendly veggies. Broccoli has always been one of my favorite vegetables and when I was little I preferred the tops while my brother preferred the bottoms. We made it so easy for my mom- she'd just cut off the tops and give them to me and give my brother the stalks. We didn't share everything like this but at least we had this one thing!

After discovering this recipe, Michael and I don't eat our broccoli any other way. Well, we don't cook broccoli any other way. I found it online awhile ago when I was doing a search for ways to cook broccoli. This is what I do in my free time. I came upon this recipe and tried it out, omitting a few ingredients here and there. It's delicious.

Ingredients:

A lot of broccoli, broken into pieces (we usually buy 3 heads and break off the trees)
a few cloves of garlic, some sliced and some minced
olive oil
salt
pepper
freezer bag

1. Pre-heat your oven to 400ºF (or to whatever else you need to cook the rest of your dinner- we've roasted these longer at 350ºF to go along with another dish and to save time/energy). Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil.

2. Break off or chop the broccoli trees and put them in the freezer bag. Get the garlic ready and put that in the bag along with the broccoli. Add some olive oil (about 2 Tbs) and salt and pepper to taste. Tightly seal  the bag.

3. Shake the bag, making sure the ingredients are all mixing together evenly with the broccoli. It's like shake and bake!

4. Spread the mixture evenly onto the cookie sheet and place in the oven. Roast for about 20 minutes, or until it's to the doneness you'd like. I'd recommend waiting patiently until it's a little darkened and crispy. We usually can't wait that long because it smells so good and we get too hungry. But try waiting the full 20 minutes or more.

5. Enjoy as a side dish with anything, by itself or even over rice with some tofu. We had it on Monday with some brown rice.