I give you the over-achiever’s veggie tray:

Before you think to yourself “that girl needs a hobby” let me say that food IS my hobby.  I needed to make a vegetable tray for my husband to take to a meeting.  Yes of course it’s easy to cut up a bunch of vegetables and lay them on the dish – but why?   The veggie tray  you take as your contribution can be a whatever or a wow, depending on the effort you put into it.

How did I make it a wow?  It’s a glass salad bowl lined with a napkin (to hide the “stems” and then kale (you can just see it around the left edge).  Around that are tall slices of carrot and celery.  Then come the skewered things:  little cremini mushrooms, some of which had their brown skin peeled away so they looked more flower like.  Yellow zucchini sliced with the zigzag cutter and topped with a grape tomato.   Cauliflower steamed for just 3 minutes to intensify the color and just barely cook it, then shocked with ice water to stop the cooking and set the color.  Radish roses, and chrysanthemums (which no one ever really eats but sure are pretty) and scallion sprays (the white and light green cut vertically into 6ths).  The radishes and scallions had to hang out in the ice water to open.  Around the skewers are green beans – blanched for 2 minutes and then shocked in the ice water; they kept their color and were crisp tender.  In the middle is a big orange bell pepper filled with a mix of ranch dressing and sour cream.  I had an bottle of ranch that was too strongly flavored in my opinion, so I mixed in sour cream.   Yes, you can make a home made dip but…I didn't want to.

This had the added bonus of being attractive to my sons and brother – none of whom I would call big veggie lovers. 

Maybe you make one and have leftovers (or have extra stuff from the creation), maybe someone leaves one at your house and you have no idea what to do with it.  Pitch the stuff you don’t like immediately, because you certainly aren’t going to develop a love for it after it’s grown fuzz in the ‘fridge, and, since you don’t know about double dippers, the dip’s gotta go too.  The veggies have potential! 

This is what I did for lunch today with my leftovers:

Chop an onion and the leftover celery, carrot (1/2 cup of those), mushrooms and squash.   Saute them in a big pot with some olive oil and a hit of salt and pepper.  Cook and stir until the onion is soft and the mushrooms are cooked.  Now add some chicken broth – about a quart.  Bring it to a boil.  Chop up the leftover cauliflower and green beans and toss them in there.  Do you have any leftover meat, beans, potatoes or pasta?  Chuck ‘em on in there.   I had half of a kielbasa and some garbanzo beans.  Taste for salt.  Let it simmer for 15 minutes or so. Voila, soup!  And if that soup is more than you need – ladle a bowl’s worth into a freezer ziptop bag and freeze for later.

If you have just the supermarket vegetable tray trinity of cauliflower broccoli and carrots, toss them in a large roasting pan with a tablespoon or so of olive oil, scatter with kosher salt and pepper, and roast the whole thing at 400 for half an hour or so, until  browned and tender.