Easy Healthy Side Dish: Seasoned Rainbow Roasted Veggies

You feast your eyes before you eat your food.  This simple, healthy side dish is the most beautiful thing I’ve eaten in a while.

See?  Sometimes you just need to add a little beauty to your plate in order to eat those veggies.  This side dish is healthy, easy, inexpensive, beautiful and best of all delicious.

We are planning our first big family vacation to sunny Florida next month.  This means, I want to make an effort to wear shorts and maybe even a (gasp) bathing suit more confidently than last summer when I was like three seconds postpartum.  It’s very difficult to get to the gym as often as I’d like so I have to take advantage of the weekend time by doing home workouts (check out @iamfitmiss on Instagram for some challenging workout ideas.  It’s my fave insta workout account) and chasing the boys around as my cardio.  See me attempting a leg/glute circuit on a weekend morning with Max and Dante here.

The weather in New England has been unusually warm this year.  Sunday, Max and I went for a hike on the trails in our back yard.  So obviously, we were pirates hunting for bad guys and hidden treasures.  And we brought our pool noodle swords just to be safe.

As the old saying goes, abs are made in the kitchen.  After two kids, my belly ain’t looking like it used to.  I didn’t completely lose hope for abs, but it’s a long way off right now.  That doesn’t mean I won’t stop trying.  Vegetables are high in vitamins and fiber which keeps you full.  They are also mostly water which means very few calories per serving.  Translation: you can eat a ton for a fraction of the calories.  Spices add tons of flavor without adding anything else.

This is a great dish to bring to a potluck or picnic too.  Slide the veggies onto a skewer in this pattern and make kebobs.  Another nice thing about this side dish is that the colors don’t change much once the vegetables are cooked.

 

Ingredients:

• Sliced mushrooms
• zucchini, broccoli, green beans,  or any green veggie
• yellow grape tomatoes, squash, yellow bell pepper or any yellow veggie
• baby carrots, orange bell pepper or any orange veggie
• red bell pepper, red grape tomatoes or any red veggie
• purple onion or eggplant
• olive oil to drizzle
• garlic powder to taste
• rosemary to taste
• thyme to taste
• salt & pepper to taste

Directions

• heat oven to 375 F
• wash and chop your veggies
• In a big bowl, working in batches of one “color” at a time, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle on your spices
• place veggies by color on a large oven-safe pan and bake for about 35 minutes

You can swap out any of the veggies that I used to suit your own taste.  Even adding some rice vinegar or balsamic would be fantastic on these.

For more healthy ideas, follow my health & fitness board on Pinterest.

Follow Mindy’s board Stay Fit on Pinterest.