Sheet pan dinners are a fairly easy fix it and forget it dinner. Prep everything, throw it in the oven, maybe turn things half way through, then it’s done and ready to eat without making 5 pots dirty or having to hand wash a pan because you didn’t load the dishes last night. It may have happened a few times.
Anyhoo, for this deliciousness, you will need
1.5 lb chicken breasts cubed
1 red onion cute in chunks
1/2 head broccoli cut in florets or frozen
1 lb brussel sprouts, trimmed and halved
1/3 c balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 garlic cloves minced
Salt and pepper
Small handful fresh basil
Place cubed chicken, onion, broccoli and Brussels on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper.
Sheet pan dinners are great! Fairly quick, you only mess up one pan and nothing to really babysit. Plus you can really use your imagination.
I had chicken legs, tons of basil from the garden, potatoes in the pantry and zucchini in the fridge. I grabbed those as well as an onion and some spices and boom! Dinner was going. Here is what I did…
1.5 lbs potatoes cut into bite sized pieces
4 medium zucchini (you can use less, I just used what I had. You can also mix in yellow squash.) Cut into chunks.
Handful of grape tomatoes
1 onion sliced in chunks
Enough chicken legs for your family
2 teaspoons garlic powder or 3-4 cloves minced
1 teaspoon each salt and pepper (or to taste)
Fresh basil, 1 handful slivered
Preheat oven to 400. Arrange cut veggies on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. Drizzle 2 teaspoons of olive oil over the veggies (use more if needed to coat). Sprinkle with most of the spices and toss. Arrange the chicken legs on top. Spray or use a pastry brush to thinly coat in olive oil. Use the remaining salt, pepper, garlic and basil. Bake for approximately 40 minutes. Note oven temps and chicken sizes vary, so check with a meat thermometer as to not over cook. This will make the zucchini and tomatoes a little mushy, so if you prefer firmer veggies, cook those in a separate pan and put in oven about 15 minutes after the chicken, potatoes and onion.
This is easy to alter. Brussel sprouts would be so good with this as well.
While some foods are great to cook in a cast iron, others may not be- like water. 🙅🏻♀️
Considering cast iron is generally safe and has been used for thousands of years, you do want to make sure you are caring for your cast iron.
I season mine often to prevent too much leaching. However, if you already have high iron levels, you may want to use a high quality stainless steel instead.
Check out this link below about cast iron and explore all the other items in your home that may also be leaching into our bodies 😱
Salt. It’s essential for life. But did you know the type of salt you use matters? This is something I recently learned. The white stuff we typically use to flavor our food is refined and stripped of its minerals in the process. Other ingredients are often added, sometimes including sugar and anti caking agents. Salt is processed and bleached for various reasons including removing toxins, but also removed the beneficial minerals and elements that are beneficial to our health. Iodine is often added to prevent thyroid swelling, or goiters, but it is not a sufficient amount to do so.
We started using Redmond’s Real Salt recently and we have made the switch to using Redmond’s to season our foods. I use the table salt to clean my cast iron pans. Redmond’s is milled from Redmond, Utah. You can see the difference in the mineral content between the salts.
My daughter kept having to urinate frequently and her doctor said to be sure we were using Redmond’s Real Salt. The salt is needed so the body can retain the water and be able to use it to hydrate the body before it leaves the body.
Did you know this about salt? What type of salt do you use?
Natural families and lifestyle 