Halloween Roast: Recipe

On Halloween, my neighborhood becomes a feast for goblins, ghosts, and the like - thousands of children with their moms and dads all come upon this small 10 block radius and it is really fantastic.  It occurred to me today that (despite our handing out about 500 pieces of candy) so many of the neighborhood parents attend the festival of parades and the trick or treating throughout the day.  We're lucky!

This being the case, meant that I, too, took off for the day. There was a great deal of running back and forth today so naturally I was tired - but all that activity actually made me crave a solid home-cooked meal.  Whole chickens were on sale at the store today - buy one, get one free.  So I bought two and froze one.  Tonight's dinner was whole roasted chicken served with roasted asparagus as well as roasted vegetables, salad and rice.  A perfect meal to combat all that candy!!!

The vegetable platter was very easy to compile and didn't require a great deal of effort at all - in fact, nothing did.  All the prep work was done in about 15 minutes!  The kids didn't care for this dish though between my husband and myself, it was all gone. I love these flavors and the texture screams Fall.

Roasted Vegetables
1/2 medium leek, finely sliced
3 medium carrots, chopped
4 medium red skinned potatoes, finely sliced
2 medium zucchini, finely sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon grated cheese
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 375.

In the bottom of a medium pie plate or casserole dish, spread out the chopped leek. Next, pile into a 3" circle all the carrots. In concentric circles, layer the zucchini and potato slices alternately.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper and drizzle with oil.  Sprinkle the top with the cheese and roast about 30 minutes. Raise the heat to 400 and roast another 10 minutes.