.patty pan: a recipe.

on saturday, i moseyed on down to the plymouth farmer's market, hoping to find something tasty. lo and behold, there was an abundance of such things! the plymouth market is so much better this year than it has been the past two years. although, it was pretty decent last year with the addition of a guy who sells lots of different vegetables. he also has a ton of winter squash in the fall. we love it! anyway, the patty patty pan squash and the yellow wax beans for this dinner were provided by a different guy and his wife. they're really nice, so i like to try to buy at least one thing from them when i go.

August Roasted Vegetables

ingredients:

3 medium patty pan squash (mine were the size of my hands)

1 quart of new (baby) potatoes, red or white

1 quart of yellow wax or green beans

half of a medium onion (mine was a candy onion from the northville market)

1 tbsp of fresh thyme

1/2 tbsp of fresh rosemary

1/2 tbsp of fresh garlic chives (all herbs preferably from the garden, of course)

1/4 cup olive oil

your preferred amount of salt and pepper

preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

cut the stem and blossom ends of the patty pan squash off, then cut into eighths. remove the seeds from each section. cut the squash and potatoes into approx. 1-inch pieces. if your beans are pretty big, like mine were, cut them in half. good news: you don't have to peel the squash! i was very nervous when i thought i might have to. how would you even do it?

chop the onion into pieces big enough not to burn. if you like bigger pieces of soft, delicious roasted onion, then by all means leave your onion pieces bigger. i cut mine to about 1/2-inch pieces.

toss the cut vegetables together with the olive oil, spices, salt and pepper in a large bowl, then spread them in one layer onto a baking sheet or roasting pan. as long as your sheet has sides, you're ok. i only have one baking sheet with sides, and no roasting pan, so i used a hodge-podge of cookware: a baking sheet, a casserole dish and a ceramic pie dish. everything worked out just fine, for the record!

throw those babies into the oven! for whatever reason, my oven takes longer to roast things than recipes call for, every time. for this, i read that i should roast the squash at 400 for 30 minutes, but it took my oven 50 minutes to roast this batch... so, if recipe roasting times usually end up being correct for your oven, then start at 30 minutes. if not, start at 40 minutes and work your way up.

let me know if any of you make this recipe, i'd love to know how it turned out! what are your favorite vegetables to roast?