Lift Up Your Hearts!

I like vegetables, especially if they're raw, but in many ways I have not recovered from my childhood opinion that vegetables are something you eat because they're good for you.  Occasionally I encounter a vegetable dish that erodes my prejudice, and this is one of them.  It can hardly even be called a recipe, but I share it anyway because it was so good.

We were having company for dinner on short notice, and I wanted a quick but substantial vegetable dish that would be slightly fancier than usual.  Since we were grilling chicken, I decided to use our grill wok for the veggies.  I'll admit I chose the particular items as much for color as for taste:  chunks of asparagus, onion, bell pepper, yellow summer squash, and carrot; I also went all out and included a package of "gourmet" mushrooms.  Choosing not to worry that the items would require different cooking times, I threw them all into a bowl, marinated them briefly (10-15 minutes) in olive oil (extra virgin), apple cider vinegar (unpasteurized), minced garlic, and a little sugar (to give the vegetables a nice glaze; not enough to make them sweet), and put them on the grill (in the grill wok, of course).  After that, all I did was stir them occasionally and let them cook a while (time will vary depending on quantity).

The result?  A beautiful dish with an amazing variety of colors, tastes, and textures.  If the asparagus tips were well done and the carrots barely cooked, that enhanced, rather than detracted, from the effect.  And it tasted really, really good.

I'm sure these vegetables were also really, really good for me.  But that's not why I ate them.  :)