I apologize for the unexpected hiatus in blog posts- I have had an absolutely crazy past month and a half. This week has been the first chance I have had to get back in the kitchen and meal prep since my last post! Feels good to be back to meal prepping!

I have received some feedback about the accessibility of my past recipe posts. People have been commenting that they may be somewhat labor intensive or require special equipment not always readily available to people. Well, this post’s recipe, and many of my future recipes, will be simple, easy, and DELICIOUS AF. The beauty of this recipe is it’s adjustability. I’ll provide the recipe I used, but it is so easy to adjust. This recipe is my version of the classic dry grilled chicken, soggy steamed broccoli, and mushy white rice that people associate with meal prepping. Meal prep doesn’t have to be boring and gross- it can be delicious AND attractive.

It may be a week late, but this seemed like an appropriate week to do my rainbow veggie dish because last Wednesday was National Coming Out Day. This day is observed every year on October 11, the anniversary of the 1987 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.

The beauty of vegetables is that they are extremely colorful and vibrant. I freaking love the produce section of stores because there is so much delicious, fresh food that can be used so diversely and adds so much color to a dish. I live my best life in the produce section.

When making this dish, it isn’t necessary to adhere to the vegetables I used at all. I will provide the recipe using my vegetables of choice so you can get an idea of how many vegetables to purchase when you grocery shop. You can go ahead and scroll to the bottom of the page for the recipe if you like. If you would like to continue with the rainbow vibe of my dish, here are some suggestions for vegetables:

• R- tomato, beets, bell pepper, radishes
• O- carrot, butternut squash, acorn squash, bell pepper, sweet potato
• Y- bell pepper, yukon potato, yellow tomato
• G- zucchini, brussels sprouts, bell pepper, asparagus, snow peas, green beans
• B/V- red onion, purple potato, purple asparagus, eggplant, purple carrot

I ended up using cherry tomatoes, carrots, yellow bell pepper, zucchini, and red onion because these are some of my favorite vegetables and they work very well together.

One thing that sets my version of chicken and vegetables apart from others is that I cube the chicken and vegetables and roast them all in one pan together on a higher heat. By cooking the dish at a higher heat with similarly shaped and sized cuts of food, the chicken stays extremely moist and the vegetables maintain some of their crispness and don’t get too mushy. I cannot stress how moist the chicken is when it comes out of the oven, it is absolutely incredible. And, by roasting all of the ingredients together at the same time, the flavor of the dish melds between the foods extremely well.

Prior to putting the food into the roasting pan, I put all of the ingredients into my Big Ass Bowl and season it all at once. I prefer seasoning in a bowl rather than on the roasting pan because this allows much more even coating of the seasonings and you can use less oil to cover the same amount of food. And, you won’t have excess oil sitting on your roasting pan.

After cooking this dish, you can serve it with your preference of side. It goes exceptionally well with brown rice and/or quinoa. I used a microwave rice pack from Seeds of Change. Each bag made 2 servings of rice and it was super affordable (because my dad bought me a box of it from Costco). Also, look at that packaging. It’s like the marketers asked themselves, “how many buzzwords can we put on one product so that millennials and soccer moms will buy our product?”

I hope you love this dish as much as I do. It is a staple of my meal preps. Happy meal prepping to all, and to all a good bite!

Roasted Chicken and Rainbow Veggies Recipe

I made 12 meals when I made this dish but I have scaled the recipe down to make 6 meals. I eat this meal at dinner because I’m rocking some mad salad game for lunches currently.

Prior to starting up my recipe, I needed to get my drink on and to get the music pumping.   Fall is here, so what better mixer to use than apple cider? I poured some apple cider into a glass with some Tennessee whiskey, apple slices, orange slices, a cinnamon stick, and a star anise. It was the perfect fall concoction. The recipe and image are courtesy of Sam Love, a human that I could not live without.

After getting my drink prepared, I fired up my bluetooth speaker and opened up my Spotify playlist “em&m” that I made for my friend Emily. It’s fire. You can click this link to open it up!

Roasted Chicken and Rainbow Veggies

Feel free to adjust this recipe as needed to your macros/taste. Vegetables can easily be substituted out and the seasonings can be crazy adjusted to make the meal different every time.

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit and line a baking pan with aluminum foil.
2. Slice the carrot into discs and cube the yellow bell pepper and red onion. Slice the zucchini in half lengthwise then slice the zucchini halves to make semicircle shaped cuts of zucchini.
3. Add the cut vegetables and cherry tomatoes to a Big Ass Bowl.
4. Mince 8 cloves of garlic and add to the Big Ass Bowl.
5. Cube 3 pounds of chicken breast and add to the Big Ass Bowl.
6. LIGHTLY drizzle olive oil, or your oil of choice, onto the food in the bowl. A little goes a long way, not much is needed at all.
7. Add around 1/4 cup of balsamic vinegar to the bowl. Feel free to add more of less. I just splash a bunch on until I feel satisfied with level of balsamic-ness I have added to the meal.
8. Season the hell out of your food. This step is very subjective- I don’t measure how much I add. I’ll list out my process, but adjust to your preferences as needed:
   • Sprinkle on a metric ton of dried thyme
   • Add a couple of pinches of salt and fresh ground pepper
   • Throw in some dried basil
   • Hit that bowl up with a liberal amount of oregano
   • Spice it up with some crushed red pepper flakes
   • Add a dash of marjoram if you just having it laying around in your pantry
9. Mix up the food in the bowl with your hands. Really spread the seasoning evenly. The advantage of using the bowl is to have an even coating of seasoning with a low amount of olive oil.
10. Place the food onto the baking sheet and place in the oven.
11. Bake the food for 20 minutes. I baked mine for about 17 and a half minutes. I use the tomatoes to guess when the food is almost ready, they should be just ready to burst. Then I cut into a piece of chicken and check if it’s done.

For a side dish, use whatever you like. I recommend brown rice or quinoa.

Roasted Chicken and Rainbow Veggies Grocery List

• 3 pounds chicken breast
• 1 large red onion
• 4 medium carrots
• 2 zucchini squashes
• 2 yellow bell peppers
• 1 large package of cherub cherry tomatoes
• Olive oil or avocado oil or other preferred oil
• Balsamic vinegar
• Dried thyme
• Dried oregano
• Dried basil
• Marjoram (if you wanna be extra, cause you won’t add that much)
• Crushed red pepper flakes