Grilled Veggie Packet

"The regenerated do not go to war, nor engage in strife.  They are children of peace who have beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning forks, and know no war." - Menno Simons

Happy Tuesday! THANKS again for sending in those pics:) - they were great & FOOD PHOTO CONTEST #3 starts now & ends May 31!! So keep taking those pictures of all your wonderful meals & creations & send 'em in! (ellenmillaine@gmail.com)


It seems like this past weekend was all about fitness & food for me:) On Sat I went w/ Meg & her friend Mon to a SELF Magazine Event in SF & it was the bomb!  I really am not little Ms. Fitness or anything, but I had a blast (go figure!).  They gave us tons of free stuff & a subscription to SELF for the year.  You have to check it out:  http://www.self.com/  I think they're gonna be in NYC next weekend.........
They also have some good recipe ideas & they have a FREE Drop 10 Program you can sign up for - w/ meal plan ideas, exercises, MOTIVATION (what I lack:)) - check it out for some motivation of your own.....

And on Sunday I had the pleasure of making Tamales from scratch with my Aunt Ellie, Kim, Lisa & their friend Sonia - something I always wanted to make & they were nice enough to let me in on it:)  We had fun & it was cool to see all the steps that go in to making tamales (Thank Sonia!) - all of the steps are a little time-consuming, but w/a group it's a lot of fun & didn't seem that hard at all.  We're gonna try making corn tamales at our next tamale party & I'll share a recipe with you here soon:)

So, enough about all that - lets get to some food! Since it's getting a little warmer, you may want to go outside & do some grilling (or inside:)  I wanted to share this recipe for a grilled veggie packet.  It's so good & versatile - last summer we had this about every other night:) - you can make it with whatever you have lying around, or whatever you've harvested from the garden......either way it's delicious!

Grilled Veggie Packet
1.  Heat up the grill & slice up your veggies.  I used: a sweet potato, broccoli, 1/2 butternut squash, handful of sweet peas, spinach, 1/2 onion & 2 carrots.  (you can definitely adapt this to suit what you have).
2.  Toss all of the chopped veggies up with some olive oil, salt, pepper & fresh chopped herbs (I used cilantro & parsley):

3.  Wrap up your packet & put it on the heated grill:

Ours got up to about 450 degrees: 

4.  Flip the packet after about 10 minutes & cook an additional 10 on the other side.....check the veggies out at least once to make sure you don't over-cook 'em (you may even want to keep them on for less time).

Remove & ENjoy!! We had ours w/ some sausage, but go wild:)

My loyal cooking audience:

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." - James Madison