Sheet Pans Are About to Be Your New BFF

Cooking is one of my favorites hobbies. It all started when I was young and my mom taught me how to make simple family favorites like meatloaf, rice pilaf, or parmesan roasted asparagus. For me, there is something very therapeutic about cooking a meal. I love experimenting with new recipes and using my friends and family as my test subjects.

But let me tell y'all what I have learned I do not like- coming home from a long day at work to the idea of having an undertaking of dinner to make. Whether you're coming home from work, school, or running errands the last thing you want to have to do is spend several hours at the counter or in front of the stove making a meal. Thus, the answer to all of our problems. The sheet pan dinner.

I first discovered sheet pan meals when I started using Advocare and was searching the boules of Pinterest looking for easy meal preps that I could put together on week nights. My results kept referring back to easy week night sheet pan meals that could solve all of my meal prep woes. It seemed perfect. As I read through the recipes, I loved that there was one constant ingredient in each meal and that was vegetables. Y'all I was shocked, and you would be too, if you looked up how many servings of vegetables we're supposed to eat each day to adequately nourish our bodies. It's UNREAL. However, sheet pan meals aid with those serving sizes by requiring a ton of vegetables of all kinds. What's even better about them is your ability to substitute them easily if there's a particular veggie you just can't stomach the thought of eating. You choose your veggies and your protein and let your oven do the rest of the work.  It's perfect cross section of quick meals, but also healthy meals.

I think the thing I love most about sheet pan meals is that they are crafted for on-the-go people like myself and are an easy way to knock out 3 or 4 dinners in under an hour. They definitely take the stress out of making dinner on the weeknights. And if you're cooking for you family, friends, or roommates they are the perfect solution because they feed close to 5 people. I made this recipe for dinner last night and put together 4 meals in addition to the one I ate right then. Check out the recipe below for your next easy weeknight meal!

Ingredients:

3 large carrots
3 redskin potatoes
1 large zucchini
1 red pepper
2 head broccoli
1 package Smoked Italian Turkey or Chicken Sausage

2 tbsp. Italian seasoning

1/4 cup of Italian cheese

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a large sheet pan with aluminum foil.
2. Wash off your vegetables under cool water.

   Slice the zucchini and carrots into coin pieces. Dice the redskin potatoes into bite size pieces. 
3. Chop the broccoli. Remove the stems and seeds from the peppers and chop into medium-sized pieces. Chop the sausage into coins.
4. Pour all the veggies and sausage on the sheet pan.
5. Sprinkle the Italian seasoning and Italian cheese over the sausage and veggies.
6. Place in the heated oven for 15 minutes. Remove and toss around the veggies and sausage and return to the oven for another 10-20 minutes or until veggies are tender.
7. Remove and top, if desired, with Italian cheese and fresh parsley.
8. Serve on top of rice if desired.