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Looking for a quick, easy, and enticing way to incorporate more vegetables into your life? Roasting may very well be just the solution you need. Not only does the blast of high heat cook vegetables to fork-tender in next to no time, but it also magically caramelizes the edges, making each bite slightly sweet and all the more enticing.

Little more than a bit of prep work and roughly 20-30 minutes of cook time separates your meal from the addition of a brightly colored, mouth-watering, and rather healthy side. And while methods vary slightly from vegetable to vegetable, follow these general guidelines:

1. Preheat the oven: Aside from tomatoes and other delicate produce, which shine when slow-roasted at a lower temperature (try 200°F), most vegetables benefit from a blast of high heat, as it promotes browning and caramelization; generally, 400-450°F is a good place to start.
2. Prep the vegetables: Usually this just means a quick scrub with a vegetable brush and a rough chop (1-inch cubes is pretty standard), but some produce like Winter squash requires a bit of peeling and even the removal of seeds but is still very easy to prep. For oddballs like brussels sprouts, trim off the woody stems, peel away any dried-out and tough outer leaves and halve the tiny cabbages so that they have a flat surface to rest on (flat surfaces allow the most pan contact and browning). Smaller root vegetables like carrots can be left whole (just trim off excess carrot tops).

Keep reading for the rest of the quick and easy procedure.

Photo: Camilla Salem

More a blueprint for experimentation than set-in-stone recipe, the classic bloody Mary plays nicely with a vast variety of flavors. Generally speaking, there are three ways to enliven the tried-and-true hangover-buster: swap out a standard ingredient for an exotic (or at least novel) one, add bloody good garnishes, or rim the glass with something unexpected. Just remember, as with any kitchen experiment, make sure to season to taste and use your best judgement when pairing flavors.

Novel Mix-Ins

• Change up the liquor: try vodka infused with jalapeño peppers or cucumbers or leave out the vodka entirely and turn to gin, sake, tequila (for a bloody Maria), or even beer.
• Heat things up: experiment with different hot sauces in lieu of Tabasco, like a homemade batch, Cholula, Frank's RedHot, or sriracha. Alternatively, try wasabi or red pepper flakes instead of horseradish or puree in a bit of kimchi.
• Make it vegan: while we rarely leave out a dash or two worcestershire sauce (it's just that good!), its not exactly vegetarian-friendly. Instead, try Bragg Liquid Aminos or a splash of soy sauce.
• Change the acid: likewise, don't even think of skipping something acidic to balance out the flavors. If you're bored by the standard spritz of lemon, try lime or vinegars like balsamic, sherry, or red wine.
• Add spice: savory spices like Chinese five-spice, garam masala, coriander, celery seed, jerk seasoning, and Old Bay are all solid options.

Keep reading for creative garnish ideas.

At last weekend's New York City Wine & Food Festival, The New York Times hosted a TimesTalk with Nathan Myhrvold, author of the groundbreaking Modernist Cuisine and a new book, Modernist Cuisine at Home ($130).

In Myhrvold's original Modernist Cuisine, his high-tech methods involve centrifuges, sous-vide baths, and other seemingly space-age kitchen equipment, but this weekend, the kitchen scientist spent a great deal of time convincing the audience that his new cookbook is indeed intended for at-home cooking, using easily-attainable kitchen tools.

His concept? Using everyday appliances in newfangled ideas, like hyper-decanting wine with an immersion blender. Whether you love the modernist concepts or are a complete skeptic, Myhrvold mentioned 10 modernist techniques that seem counterintuitive but are tried and tested to achieve perfection in the kitchen. "The laws of physics and chemistry are involved in cooking, and so shouldn't we know what they are?" he reminds us.

See 10 of Myhrvold's at-home modernist techniques.

Interval training is the ultimate fitness mashup, blending the speeds of both the tortoise and the hare. The benefits of this workout — pushing your pace, then slowing down to recover just so you can push your pace again — will certainly motivate you to play with your speed. If you haven't already added them to your cardio workouts, here are seven benefits of interval training.

While cardio exercise is necessary to losing fat all over your body, according to research published in the International Journal of Obesity, interval training targets your waistline. Adding bursts of speed can help you lose stubborn abdominal fat, which is a boon for your skinny jeans and your overall health. Having a waist size over 35 inches if you're a woman puts you at a higher risk for heart disease and some cancers.

Got a Need For Speed?
The most obvious benefit, but still worth noting, is that interval training will make you faster. Picking up your pace when training with intervals helps to increase your speed, whether you run, bike, or swim. If you're working toward a personal record for an upcoming race, then don't skip your speed work. Here are interval workouts for biking, swimming, and running. Triathlon, anyone?

Keep reading to learn five more reasons to kick it up a notch.

Don't eat this, stay away from that — following a diet can seem like a total killjoy. If you're feeling depressed about how restrictive your diet is, here are some proven weight-loss rules you'll welcome with open arms.

1. Dig into a big breakfast: Skipping breakfast to save calories? That's a big mistake because eating breakfast actually jump-starts your metabolism. Your first meal of the day should include protein to reduce sugar cravings, and fiber to satiate your hunger. A veggie omelet, fruit smoothie with spinach, oatmeal with fruit and nuts, or Greek yogurt with fresh fruit are excellent choices.
2. Say yes to carbs: Before you get too excited, know that I'm not talking about bagels. Simple carbs, made from enriched white flour, offer little nutritional value and more calories than you need. Stick to complex carbs like quinoa, brown rice, and oats, as well as foods made from whole grain flour such as pasta and crackers — of course, you still need to be mindful of portion sizes.) Complex carbs are not only full of fiber that keep hunger at bay, they also contain valuable vitamins and minerals your body needs such as vitamins B6 and E and iron.

Keep reading for four more weight-loss rules you'll love following.

Some people may wonder why procrastination advice seems to never work for them and if there is a deeper issue at hand. Well, for 20 percent of the population who are chronic procrastinators, it is a serious problem that needs to be addressed, according to Joseph Ferrari, a psychology professor at DePaul University and a leading expert in the study of procrastination. For those 20 percent, telling them to just "do it" is like "telling a clinically depressed person to cheer up," says Ferrari, author of the book Still Procrastinating?.

It's a serious problem if . . .

So how do you know if you're a chronic procrastinator? "You find that you procrastinate at home, at school, at work, in relationships. You don’t pay your bills on time . . . You miss sporting events, concerts because you never got the ticket," says Ferrari. "You’re late for any social gathering, you’ll miss doctor’s appointments because you're never there on time, the refrigerator is empty because you never restock it in time, food goes bad because you never eat it on time. If you do all those kind of things, you probably are a chronic procrastinator."

Read on to find out how people become procrastinators.

Making jams and pickles involves more than just throwing the contents into a glass jar; if you plan to store the canned item for several months, the cans must be processed using a method of suctioning the seal of the cans to preserve the jar's contents. But before attempting any recipe that calls for canning, it's important that you have all the equipment on hand, especially if you are making jam or pickles for the very first time. Here are the essential items you'll need and the purposes they serve:

• Fine mesh sieve or chinois: If you are making jam and need to strain the fibrous skin and seeds of the cooked fruit, a fine mesh sieve or a chinois is the easiest way strain the juice. The Williams-Sonoma chinois strainer, pestle, and stand ($70) is a jam-making life-changer. Simply place a bowl under the nifty stand, and with the other hand, use the pestle to extract every last drop of cooked fruit juice from the chinois.
• Jar funnel: It's important to prevent any liquids from contaminating the spiral seal on the outside of the glass jar. To do so, use a jar funnel like this Norpro stainless steel wide-mouth funnel ($8) to cleanly deposit the jam or pickled vegetables into the jar.
• Pressure cooker: These deep, large vessels make it easy to boil water faster and to submerge several glass jars in the water. Pressure cookers are used to sterilize the glass jars prior to filling them with jam or pickles. Then after the jars are filled, they go back into the pressure cooker for processing. This Fagor nine-piece pressure canning set ($115) is great for newbies, because in addition to the pressure cooker, it also contains all the canning equipment.
• Glass jars with metal seals and lids: Ball and Kerr mason jars are the most well-known brands on the market, and for the best deal, buy them in bulk. Some sources will say that you can reuse the glass jar, but the seal and lid should be replaced after each use. Others have reused the items without any problems. If you notice any rust forming or if the seal does not snap when processing, discard the items and swap them out for new ones.

Find out what else you'll need to start canning.

Making its Olympics debut in these London games, women's boxing is the sport to watch in 2012. Team USA flyweight boxer Marlen Esparza was only 11 when she first stepped into a boxing gym, and it took her days to convince trainer Rudy Silva to allow her to participate in his group workouts. After watching her throw some sloppy but passionate punches at a bag and seeing what Rudy describes as a "spark," he allowed Marlen, now 23, to join his sessions with advanced boys.

But that spark doesn't mean Rudy welcomed her with open arms. "I tried to push her really, really hard," recalled Rudy during a recent interview at Nike's campus in Oregon. "I would push the groups really hard, mainly because I wanted her to just quit. After a while, some of my guys started quitting. She just kept showing me every day that she was there to stay and this is what she wanted to do." Eleven years later, Rudy is still her trainer and Marlen's tenacity paid off. Not only has she won six national titles, winning her first at age 16, but she was also the first woman to qualify for the US Olympic boxing team.

This honor is not lost on Marlen. In a quick interview in Houston she told us, "To be the first woman to qualify for the Olympics is everything to me. People say to me, 'Boxing is not who you are; it's what you do.' But to me, it's who I am. I've never felt this good in my entire life, ever."

The road to qualifying wasn't straightforward, though. The announcement that women's boxing would be included in the London games also included the news that four weight classes would be combined. Rudy explained, "At the time that they announced the 112 flyweight class, the weight classes that were going to merge into 112 were 106, 110, 114, and 119. Those four weight classes had to compete at 112." Until the International Olympic announcement, Marlen had fought in the 106-pound weight class. "I had to gain weight," Marlen told us. "In 2010 I started competing at the 112 Olympic weight class and figuring out who was going to make it to the games. I was fighting girls down from weighing 119. It was intense. Luckily, I beat them all."

Learn details of how the young boxer eats and trains after the break.