Roasted Veggie Rice

This is a pretty simple beginning, but I just so happened to make this with my dinner tonight and thought it was fabulous, for a healthy side. I may even throw in some cubed chicken breast next time and make it an entree. This is a great recipe to use when you have a bunch of veggies hanging out in the bottom of the crisper that are about to get... funky. You can use whatever veggies you have on hand, these are just what happened to be doing time in my fridge.

Ingredients

olive oil

4 roma tomatoes

1 onion, chopped

1 jalapeno, halved & seeded (Note :: when working with jalapenos, wear latex gloves that you can just toss in the trash afterward, and for a milder jalapeno, scrape a bit of flesh out of the inside with your fingernails or a grapefruit spoon when you are seeding the pepper)

1 green bell pepper, cored and roughly chopped

1 red bell pepper, cored and roughly chopped

1 zucchini, quartered, then cut in slices

obscene amounts of garlic, chopped

6 c chicken or vegetable stock

3 c long grain rice

2 sprigs fresh rosemary

Directions

1. Toss tomatoes, onion, peppers and zucchini with oil and spread in pans lined with aluminum foil. Sprinkle liberally with garlic, and stir some extra in if you are especially partial to garlic. I am.
2. Roast veggies at 400 until tender and slightly browned. The skin on the tomatoes should have a wrinkled appearance, and the skin on the peppers will be browned a bit. The onions should be translucent. Take them out and let them cool down a bit before chopping the peppers. Chop the jalapeno finely so there can be a tiny piece in every bite! Remove the skin from the bell peppers and tomatoes before you chop them.
3. Start heating the broth to a rolling boil.
4. Heat a bit of oil in a big skillet and saute the dry rice. Saute it just a few minutes, until every grain is coated in oil and the rice has a bit of color to it. Add to the boiling broth, add veggies and rosemary, cover and turn down heat to a simmer. Cook 20 minutes. Fluff rice, mixing veggies back in (they will be in a layer on top), and remove and discard rosemary.

Yummy! Makes about 10 cups.