A-Nom-Nom: Roasted Root Vegetables with Thyme

With a large family, Christmas dinner tends to become more of a cohesive potluck - everyone pitches in by either making a dish, or cleaning up afterwards. Some of us participate in both types of activity, but I'm not here to point fingers!

I've been a little short on creativity in the kitchen lately, so I was happy to see that Canadian Living Magazine was willing to help me out. My subscription to the magazine was a bit of an accident (choosing it against Style At Home!), but I'm glad that I'll have these issues to reference as the years fly by. You see, reading Style At Home makes me want furniture and home decor items that I could never afford. Canadian Living makes me feel like a good mom, housewife, and an overall good Canadian.

Anyway, I decided on the following recipe to bring to the annual Christmas dinner because a) I'm the vegetarian, and b) there was a huge bag of carrots in my fridge at the time.

I'll post the original recipes from the CL mag, but I obviously made tweaks as I went, depending on what was available to me.

Roasted Root Vegetables with Thyme 
Serves 6

• 2 lbs beets (about 6), peeled*
• 1 lb parsnips (about 3), peeled
• 12 oz carrots (about 4), peeled
• 6 cloves of garlic, peeled
• 6 sprigs of fresh thyme
• 3 tbsp. olive oil
• 4 tsp. balsamic vinegar
• 1/2 tsp. salt



Roasted Root Veggies with Thyme







• 1/4 tsp. pepper

*Personally, I omitted the beets and made up the difference in carrots and sweet potato (yams). I also added a couple of quartered white onions. Who am I kidding ... I didn't measure anything.

Cut the beets, parsnips, and carrots (and whatever other vegetable you chose) into 2cm pieces; place into large bowl. Add whole peeled garlic cloves, fresh thyme, oil, vinegar, salt & pepper. Toss to coat.

Roast in a greased roasting pan at 375 degrees F (190 degrees Celsius) in oven. Stir once or twice, until golden and tender - approximately 1 1/2 hours. Garnish the finished dish with sprigs of fresh thyme.