Hello Zen & Spice readers! I’m Alysia, and I blog over at Slim Sanity. I can’t remember exactly how I found Emily, but I was drawn in by her delicious recipes and beautiful food pics! I’m a sucker for anything that makes me drool on my computer screen. When she reached out about guest post swapping, I was all in!

I made a couple ‘cooking resolutions’ for myself this year. I’m trying really hard to eat more veggies! As a healthy living blogger you’d think I might not have this problem…but I go through phases where I kinda forget to eat anything green. Major fail.

To solve this problem, I’m trying to make sure I have plenty of green veggies food prepped and ready to snack on, or add as a side dish for lunch and dinner. Lately, I’ve been meal planning to have two veggies sides prepared and portioned in the fridge. I’ve been killin’ it on the veggie front.

My other cooking effort this year is to experiment with more spices and herbs. I realized most of my recipes use the same things…which revolve around basil, garlic and homemade taco seasoning. I will put taco seasoning on pretty much ANYTHING…and everything! So most of the food I make on a daily bases all tastes the same. Kinda boring, amiright? Actually… that’s a lie, because anything with taco seasoning on it tastes amazeballs, lets be honest here!

While browsing the fresh herbs at the store, I was trying to come up with a fun (or delicious – who describes food as fun?) side dish idea for Zen and Spice. Ruling out anything taco-ified, I reached out for the basil – my usual veggie seasoning go-to. Then I changed my mind and picked up rosemary instead. Guess I still need to work on the whole choose different herbs and spices thing.

Rosemary was totes outta my comfort zone, so I figured it was a great choice. I had NEVER cooked with rosemary before, and I think I’ve only ever eaten it on potatoes. And since potatoes are vegetables (?), that’s almost exactly like broccoli, so I figured I could roll with it!

The end result was superb. Besides the fact the broccoli smells terrible while it’s roasting, the finished products tasted amazing! I won’t lie, I also used garlic in the recipe. So much for breaking all those comfort zone boundaries. But it paired up with the rosemary nicely!

I challenge you all to join me with more herbs and spices this year, starting with this rosemary roasted broccoli with toasted pine nuts!

I love to cook with fresh herbs, and don’t do it often enough! An herb garden probably needs to be on my to-do list somewhere. I think it’d have to be an indoor garden since Texas weather is 50% unpredictable and 50% scorching hot. But I’m not sure how long an indoor herb garden would last with two dogs in the house!

If you want to see some more delicious veggie sides, I encourage you to check out these recipes!

Honey Roasted Carrots

Sweet Potato Fries

Do you have an herb garden? Can you give me any tips?