Stuffed Zucchini Boats and Rosemary Roasted Carrots

This was an amazing meal. I was planning to make the zucchini boats, but the roasted carrots were on a whim. And they turned out to be amazing! I sliced the carrots, then tossed them with shallots in olive oil and garlic salt. Lastly, I added a torn up sprig of rosemary. This made the dish. I love rosemary it adds this wonderful earthy flavor to everything, and it goes with so many different flavor profiles. In this case the mild salty taste of the shallots, and the earthiness of the rosemary blended with the sweet taste of the cooked carrots. I cooked them at 425 F for about 25-30 minutes, this means that they were cooked until they were tender, but also got nice and dry. I like my carrots that way and it helped them soak up the rose merry flavor. This was so easy to do and is such a nice and healthy side dish. I'll be making this again for sure. 

The second part of the meal was a more planned part. I've been wanting to make stuffed zucchini boats for awhile now and I finally got around to it! I cut 2 zucchinis lengthwise and them hollowed them out (below top). This was fairly easy to do, and I kept the inside of the zucchinis to use for later in the week. The next step was to make the filling. For the base I used this sundried tomato cream cheese dip that I got at the grocery store. The I added 2 big handfuls of spinach and a bunch of sliced up artichoke hearts. I mixed this all together, so that it was uniform and then filled the boats. My last touch was topping them with shredded parmesan cheese. Then they were ready to be popped in the oven! I cooked them at the same temperature and for the same time as the carrots (425F for 25 minutes). They were perfectly cooked, the zucchinis were cooked and flavorful, caramelized on the bottom, but not runny. The parmesan had formed a nicer melted crust and the filling had blended together perfectly. This was an excellent dinner and I am glad that it turned out so well and was so easy to make.

Thoughts on these Dishes:

• Both of these make good side dishes (or if you eat two zucchini boats then they're enough for a meal), and they are also really homey, even wintery, dishes. Of course even though it's autumn in Brisbane it feels like summer (80F is the typical temp), and they were still great.
• Zucchini boats seem like a real versatile dish, so I can mix and match flavor profiles fairly easily. Next time I might try stuffing with quinoa to make the dish more filling and also add some protein. 
• The carrots were originally supposed to have some feta sprinkled in them after I cooked them, but I didn't think they needed it and it was right, they were great and I wouldn't change anything about that recipe.

Loved both of these, so happy to add two new veggie dishes to my repertoire!