Roasted Broccoli w/Butternut Squash Cheese Sauce

A co-worker recently made mention of vegan butternut squash mac & cheese. I had never heard of this wonderful idea before, but knew I needed to try it. Like most vegans, I'm always searching for the "best" vegan mac & cheese recipe. When I googled vegan butternut squash mac & cheese most of the results led me back to the same place, Oh She Glows. I had a squash I picked up at the co-op that I needed to use, so I decided I would give it a try. I made the baked variation because I figure most mac & cheese is better baked with bread crumbs on top. The results were good, but I wasn't blown away, and I don't think Chase was either. I had some extra cheese sauce leftover and put it in the fridge thinking I would try to do something with it, but I wasn't sure what.

When I remember to look through all the shrink veggies at work (the ones that we deem not good enough to sell, but almost always good enough to eat), I usually find lots of stuff to take home. Recently there was an abundance of broccoli and cauliflower. I never buy these particular veggies because my husband finds them unbearably bitter, but since they were free, I figured I would take them home and hopefully find a time I could enjoy them by myself. I had been wanting to try oven roasted broccoli for a while, so I figured this was the perfect opportunity. I cut up the broccoli and cauliflower into bite sized pieces and spread them out on a foil lined sheet pan. Using my new Misto olive oil sprayer (thanks mom!), I lightly sprayed them with olive oil, tossing them a couple times to coat all sides of veggies. I sprinkled them with salt and pepper and a few cloves of chopped garlic.

In a 400 degree oven, I roasted them for 10 minutes, turned the veggies with a spatula, and put them back in for another 5 minutes until just starting to crisp up.

They were delicious on their own, but I remembered I had leftover cheese sauce from the day before, and figured I would try to use it up. OMG, the combination of the veggies and the cheese sauce is soo good! I now make the cheese sauce with the intention of eating it on roasted broccoli because it is so good. I can eat a whole head of broccoli in one sitting when it's served this way, and there is nobody to fight me for it since Chase doesn't like broccoli :)