Balsamic Glazed Carrots -- a roasted veggie #recipe for the New Year from @LeslieBudewitz

LESLIE BUDEWITZ:  Whether you’re promising yourself to eat more vegetables this year, you need a simple recipe after the more involved cooking and baking many of us do during the holidays, or you just want an easy side dish for dinner tonight, you need this recipe for Balsamic Glazed Carrots. It’s almost a no-recipe recipe – make it once and you’ll know what to do. Plus it can be easily customized – add a dash of a spice blend you’ve been wanting to try, or use up, or were recently given. Top with those extra toasted almonds, or the fresh parsley or dill or whatever is hanging out in your fridge. 

We served it with roasted salmon, but it would go beautifully with any fish, chicken, or beef. Leftovers reheat nicely. I used one of our quarter-sheet roasting pans from King Arthur, which I raved about in our chat Around the Kitchen Table on new kitchen tools and gadgets. 

Roasted vegetables. So yummy, so easy. Put them on your New Year’s resolutions list!

Wishing you all the best – and tastiest – in 2024!

Watch for the cover reveal for To Err is Cumin, the 8th Spice Shop Mystery, in my newsletter on January 14 and on Dru's Book Musing on January 16! Available for pre-order now. 

Balsamic Glazed Carrots

1 pound baby carrots (or regular carrots, halved and cut in 3-4" pieces)

2 tablespoons olive oil

½ teaspoon kosher salt

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

parsley or other fresh herbs (optional garnish)

Heat oven to 400 degrees. In a shallow baking pan, toss the carrots, olive oil, and salt. Roast 20 minutes, until tender, giving the pan an occasional shake or stir.

Take the pan out of the oven and drizzle with the balsamic vinegar, giving it a good stir to coat the carrots evenly. Roast another 5-10 minutes until carrots are tender and glazed. 

Serves 4 as a side dish. 

Watch for the cover reveal for To Err is Cumin, the 8th Spice Shop Mystery, in my newsletter on January 14 and on Dru's Book Musing on January 16! Available for pre-order now. 

BETWEEN A WOK AND A DEAD PLACE: A Spice Shop Mystery (Seventh St. Books, in paper, ebook, and audio)

From the cover: 

It's the Lunar New Year, and fortunes are about to change. 

 

Pepper Reece, owner of the Spice Shop in Seattle's Pike Place Market, loves a good festival, especially one serving up tasty treats. So what could be more fun than a food walk in the city's Chinatown–International District, celebrating the Year of the Rabbit?

 

But when her friend Roxanne stumbles across a man's body in the Gold Rush, a long-closed residential hotel, questions leap out. Who was he? What was he doing in the dust-encrusted herbal pharmacy in the hotel's basement? Why was the pharmacy closed up—and why are the owners so reluctant to talk? 

 

With each new discovery, Pepper find herself asking new questions and facing more brick walls. 

 

Then questions arise about Roxanne and her relationship to Pepper's boyfriend Nate, away fishing in Alaska. Between her worries and her struggle to hire staff at the Spice Shop, Pepper has her hands and her heart full. Still, she can't resist the lure of the Gold Rush and its tangled history of secrets and lies stretching back nearly a century. 

 

But the killer is on her tail, driven by hidden demons and desires. As Pepper begins to expose the long-concealed truth, a bigger question emerges: Can she uncover the secrets of the Gold Rush Hotel without being pushed from the wok into the fire?

Leslie Budewitz is the author of the Spice Shop Mysteries set in Seattle's Pike Place Market, and the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, set in NW Montana. As Alicia Beckman, she writes moody, standalone suspense, most recently Blind Faith. She is the winner of Agatha Awards in three categories: Best Nonfiction (2011), Best First Novel (2013), and Best Short Story (2018). Her latest book is Between a Wok and a Dead Place, the 7th Spice Shop mystery.  

A past president of Sisters in Crime and national board member of Mystery Writers of America, Leslie lives in northwest Montana with her husband, a musician and doctor of natural medicine, and their cat, an avid bird-watcher.

Swing by Leslie's website and join the mailing list for her seasonal newsletter. And join her on Facebook where she shares book news and giveaways from her writer friends, and talks about food, mysteries, and the things that inspire her.