It's a new year, and perhaps you've already made healthy lifestyle changes...perhaps you're doing yoga, exercising, meditating or just working on eating healthier. So many studies suggest that you can improve your health dramatically simply by eating more vegetables, legumes, fruit, seeds and nuts and fewer animal products.

Increasing the variety of foods you eat is important as well. There are different vitamins and nutrients in a beet as opposed to a carrot, as opposed to spinach. As a general rule, eat a colorful diet mostly from plant sources.

This is a super easy and yummy recipe that you can alter to your liking. But try it with all the veggies the first time. It is nourishing, filling, grounding and naturally sweet. If you add a dark, leafy green salad, it's a filling meal.

Root Vegetable Mix

You can use a variety of vegetables of your choosing, but I'd stick to mostly root veggies or other veggies that stand up well to oven roasting.

Preheat your oven to 425. Drizzle a little olive oil on a large cookie sheet (I usually cover my cookie sheet in aluminum foil, then layer on a piece of parchment paper - this makes for quick and easy clean-up with no sticking of the veggies).

 

Then you'll need to prep your vegetables. Scrub and cut into one inch cubes:

2 large beets or 4 small ones, peeled

1 large sweet potato

1 large potato

2 parsnips, peeled (a parsnip looks kind of like a white carrot)

2 large carrots, peeled

2 turnips, peeled (a turnip is round and white with a bit of purple to one end usually)

1/2 head of cauliflower 

 

Add these to the baking sheet.

Then wash and chop:

2 leeks or 1 large onion.

Peel between 3 and 5 garlic cloves, but leave them whole. Add the onion/leek and garlic to the baking sheet. Drizzle everything with a bit of olive oil (approximately 2 to 3 Tablespoons, no more)

Sprinkle with some coarse salt, sea salt or your preferred salt. Go easy on the salt, you can add more later, but you can't take away.

Place your tray of veggies in the oven and roast for approximately 20 - 25 minutes.

 

Add approximately one cup of already cooked Cannelini beans or White Northern beans (canned is fine if they are low to no sodium and thoroughly rinsed.) Simply sprinkle them on top of the roasted veggie mix. 

Return baking sheet to oven for another 5 to 8 minutes or until all of the veggies are tender when pierced with a fork. That's it!

Scoop yourself out a big bowl of the veggie mix, add a leafy salad for a complete, cleansing, delicious meal.