My Therapist Cooks

side dish

Roasted Spiced Brussels Sprouts

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One of my best "use the oven at all times" Thanksgiving tips: plan an easy side dish that can roast or broil while the turkey rests and is carved.

roasted brussels sprouts

EVEN IF you have a few casseroles that need to reheat at the same time, having one veggie that comes out of the oven fresh right as you're ready to eat makes a really nice balance to what can be a pretty heavy meal.

This technique can apply to tons of veggies, like this 5-minute asparagus from last year or these broiled lemon green beans. This year, I'm doing spiced, roasted Brussels sprouts. They get washed/prepped early in the week, then tossed with butter and spices early in the day. It's a raw veg, so no need to clog up fridge space. They hang out on a baking sheet prepped and ready, roast in the oven while the turkey gets its beauty treatment, and done! A vegetable for those of us that like some vegetables with our butter.

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Crispy Garlic Butter Smashed Potatoes

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Don't leave me. It feels good. Embrace it. The garlic butter, that is. 

Garlic Butter Smashed Potatoes Recipe

Hello and welcome to your new favorite side dish! These smashed potatoes are YUMMY, a word that honestly should be used to describe as many of your foods as possible. You only live once, potatoes are a vegetable, and garlic butter is the savory icing on the potato cake that we all need to use whenever we possibly can. 

I wrote on Instagram yesterday how much I love this Southern-style cabbage for a quick weeknight side dish. These garlic butter potatoes, I'd argue, go perfectly with said cabbage, add some fish and chicken and here we go not sorry about two side dishes that use butter, know what I mean? These Crispy Garlic Smashed Potatoes are simple to make in just a few steps and the end result is a fluffy-on-the-inside, crispy-on-the-outside cross between mashed potatoes and french fries that is REALLY yummy. Trust.

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Roasted Carrots with Bacon

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On New Year's Eve of....last year? this year? how do we describe this? the one that just happened. Let's start again.

Roasted Carrots with Bacon from funnyloveblog.com

The last time we had a New Year's Eve, Jay and I went to a fancy dinner with our best friends. It was excellent. Will was just a few weeks old, we felt free, and the food was fabulous.

The dinner was one of those "four courses choose one thing each course" fixed price special event dealios, and for most of the courses we each chose different stuff so we could try everything. And almost without fail, the vegetables were the best things on the table. I'm talking pate vs a raw cauliflower thing, greens vs pork belly - on paper, the meat stuff should have been the best.

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Bruleed and Curried Carrots

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Continuing our Thanksgiving prep! Enter...a newish way to eat veggies with lots of butter in them. I like carrots in almost all forms, but they can definitely feel like an afterthought or boring vegetable. We roast them at home a ton with olive oil, salt, and dried dill - that's probably my favorite way to eat them. 

My family never did carrots at holidays, but I think the boiled-in-sugar version is common, or at least was in the 80's, in many families. I think carrots (I always picture them at cafeterias like this) boiled in butter and sugar are delicious, and that was kind of the impetus for this recipe. We boil the carrots in stock, butter, and spices, then broil them with some coarse sugar for a fake brulee effect. The end result is tender, flavorful, and so warming from the spices. 

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Sugar Snap Pea Salad

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This Southern-style sugar snap pea salad is WHAT YOU NEED for hot summer day. Perfect for meal prep, a cookout, or potluck, the creamy dressing, salty bacon, and crunchy, snappy peas form the most delicious summer side dish ever. This version is gluten free!

Southern = it has bacon. 

Here's our new favorite summer side dish! We are all about sugar snap peas, and this time of year when they're actually GOOD and we have a chance of finding them locally we have them around all the time. We eat a lot of raw veggies as snacks with hummus or ranch, but turning them into quick side dishes to go with grilled meat or to take to a potluck is another favorite thing to do with peas especially. There are tons of variations of this salad, and I made mine with a combination of classic Southern flavors (bacon, mayo) with some extra brightening flavors from lemon juice and fresh herbs. The combination of creamy/salty with herby freshness is SO good, and of course it goes without saying that while not a perfect superfood, this is a better choice than, say, the exact same salad base with potatoes or pasta instead of a raw veg. 

Raw veggies balance bacon, is my aesthetic. 

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