JULIE WELLS: Vegetable bake a light, flavorful dish

I’ve had the pleasure of writing this recipe column for almost four years now, and I’ve come a long way in the cooking world. Well, at least in my own personal cooking world I have.

I kind of giggled when I looked back at my very first recipe column. The topic was caramel apples. It may seem like I started off easy, but there’s a science to making sure that caramel sticks to apples.

But what I’m most proud of as my columns have evolved is that I’ve overcome my fear of just throwing stuff together and not going by a recipe.

Today’s recipe, for instance, is one of those type of recipes.

We had a turkey breast cooking in the Crock-Pot and I just wasn’t sure what to cook to go along with it. Of course my first thought was sweet potatoes, cranberry and apple casserole, but Thanksgiving is still a few months away.

So I began searching the pantry and the freezer, and we just seemed to have a little of this and a little of that. So, I used a little bit of vegetable medley, some Italian diced tomatoes and little bit of onion, and voila, the vegetable bake is one of our new favorite dishes.

I know this recipe seems like a casserole, but it isn’t. This bake has a light and refreshing taste to it. It doesn’t have cream and it has just the right amount of cheese. It is nice to be able to taste the vegetables.

Because this recipe is so versatile, don’t forget to switch out the vegetables to ones your family likes if someone isn’t partial to squash and zucchini.

VEGETABLE BAKE

What you need …

One can of Italian diced tomatoes, drained

2 to 3 cups of frozen vegetable medley (carrot, cauliflower, squash and zucchini medley is used in this recipe)