A Sizzling Roasted Veggie and Bratwurst Tray With A Juicy Cucumber Salad

We opened the TGLF Testkitchen today and verified our first reader's write-in-recipe to be absolutely delicious. This one came from the blog's fam fan and aunt to the girls, Cat Runden.  Thank you Aunt Cat.

So this is how it went. We turned the oven to 450F and washed, peeled and otherwise prepared and cut up 1 lb of potatoes, half a big onion, half a red pepper, 1 fennel bulb, and half a lb of carrots and chucked them all on roasting tray.

Then we cut up some rosemary, sage, thyme, and 2 cloves of garlic and added them to half a cup of vegetable broth with 2 tablespoons of olive oil.

Then we poured it all with some salt and pepper over the veggies and stuffed the whole mess into the oven, covered with aluminum foil.

After 35 minutes we heated a frying pan on high and browned 5 bratwurst sausages,

sliced them in half,

and, after 45 minutes, placed them on the veggies. Then we drizzled about 4 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar over everything and shoved it back in the oven uncovered for another 25 minutes.

That gave us time to play with a cucumber. We turned it into a zebra first, and then

deseeded it.

We sliced the cucumber, added a bit of greek yogurt,

olive oil,

juice of half a lemon, salt, and pepper to taste.

After a total of 70 minutes we retrieved the veggie tray. which at that point looked and smelled marvelous. We licked our chops, set the table, and

ate like champions.