Lentil and Beet Salad with Goat Cheese

Do you remember when I attempted to make a beet and lentil salad?  And it was awful?  I do, and since then, I have been plotting a way to make it again.  Except delicious.  

Challenge accepted.  Enter Bobby Flay.  This was the blueprint.   Of course, I didn't have sherry vinegar, so I used a mix of red wine vinegar and apple cider vinegar.  I'm not sure why, but it worked.  I didn't use bacon, because we didn't have any.  I THOUGHT we had dijon mustard, but we didn't.  We had mustard seeds, though so....

I smashed it up with some olive oil.  Go me.

On to the actual cooking.  The day before, I chopped up the beets and roasted them at 375 until they were tender, and mixed the dressing.  I did not photograph those steps.  Bad Blogger!  I also made the lentil broth that night.  

 Nice broth of chicken stock, celery leftover from our fondue-ing, and some onion mixed with tons of spices. 

 The morning I was ready to make it, I added in the lentils and cooked them until the liquid was gone.  

In a separate pan, I mixed onion and garlic with butter, and then threw in the lentils.  I discarded the mushy celery and onion.  

At dinnertime, all we had to do was throw the lentil mixture over some arugula and dressing, throw on the goat cheese, and arrange the beets. 

It was so much better.  It was easy, surprisingly easy, especially with the changes and prepping it in steps.  It was cheap, other than the goat cheese, but you could omit that.  We probably would have, but I wanted to make it just like the meal at the restaurant.  SUCCESS!!

This was also posted at
Kelly the Kitchen Kop for Real Food Wednesday!
and
Wholesome Whole Foods!

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Oats and Oops

I have been running with this whole oats-for-breakfast thing.  I made clean out the fridge oats the other morning.

Oats with peanut butter, leftover apple butter (yes, from a million years ago when we went apple picking.  I finished the last bit in this meal.), flax seeds, and raisins.

Life was good.

Dinner was not.

Recently, John and I went to a restaurant and had a beet and lentil salad that was amazing.  I tried to re-create it for dinner and failed miserably.

It started out innocently enough.  I boiled some beets and cooked some lentils in chicken broth.

(for the record, it is 10:58 AM.  I prep dinner before work)

 

 I then cooked the beet greens in oil and vinegar.  Mistake #1.  They were super bitter.

I combined everything with a bunch of spices.  Mistake #2.  It was just not yummy.

 

THEN, I added ricotta cheese.  Mistake #3.  The salad we had at the restaurant had delicious goat cheese on it and it really made the dish.  We didn't have any so I thought to use ricotta.  NOT GOOD.

All in all I learned that my creation was gross and some things are better eaten out.  Especially when you have no idea what you are doing.

Oh well.  At least the leftover lentils were good in hummus. 

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Just one of those days....

I'm trying to get back into the swing of things.  On Monday and Tuesday life just overwhelmed me.  Correction.  Since last week life had been overwhelming me.  Unfortunately, this has been one of the things that has fallen by the wayside.  LUCKILY, today I didn't go to work until 3 and was able to catch up on life, leaving me free to do things I enjoy, like this!

Tuesday breakfast was a tropical smoothie featuring coconut, banana, pineapple, flax seeds, soy milk, and beet greens (not pictured)

I was so busy preparing for dinner during lunch that I only managed to grab a snack to eat!

 The bread is leftover from John's Awesome Monday Dinner (I'm still on him to post... it'll be here soon!).  The top one is almond butter and apple butter.  The bottom one is almond butter and pineapple preserves.  It was small and rushed, but delish!

At lunch, THIS is what I was busy doing!

 

  

Purple Cauliflower!

 

Remember when I made that Beet, Potato, and Onion roasted thing??  And then I roasted Broccoli?  Welllll instead of broccoli I roasted the purple cauliflower and added it into the other recipe.  WOW!!! So delish and filling. 

Of course, after dinner I was hungry for a snack, so I whipped out THESE little guys!

They were being sampled at the grocery store, and after examining the ingredients, I had to get them.  This company seems awesome.  Check it out.  Yogi Products.  I love the crisps!  I haven't tried my cherry almond cereal yet, but it seems like it's going to be great.  It was a wonderful way to end the day!

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Meat and Beets (Hummus Style)

John's mom gave us a bag of really good quality meat that I had to cook today. Although I was home all morning, I decided to make it BBQ style in the slow cooker (because who doesn't love fall-off-the-bone-meat? other than vegetarians, of course, but you know...). Rather than eat my way through my morning again, I made a delicious side instead... Beet Hummus!


Let's start with the meat.

Added BBQ sauce, ground flax seeds, garlic, vinegar, and water.

Added onions.

Cooked all day and served!
With a side of oven-baked fries (John made!)


Onto the Beet Hummus. We love hummus, as seen here. We also love beets (here and here). I saw this posted on This Is Why You're Thin! and knew I had to try it. John was afraid it would dye our blender pink, but when I had success with the beet smoothie, I knew I was good to go.

I roasted a beet and some garlic in the oven (400 degrees for 45 minutes).
Then I was supposed to peel the skin off the beet. Here is where I always get stuck. It is supposed to be sooooooooo easy to peel the skin off a cooked beet. I don my gloves and go to town, but I am usually rewarded with only a few pieces! NOT EASY! But... all in all I don't worry about it. The beet is clean (enough!) and the skin has nutritional value. I just eat it.

But I digress.

Next step? Add beet to blender with the juice of a lemon, 1/4 cup tahini, a can of chick peas, some water, and salt.
Blend and enjoy!

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Watermelons and Beets

Back in the beginning of August, John's dad threw a bunch of watermelon seeds into the yard to see if they would grow. Of all the seeds, one took and produced one cute baby watermelon.
We thought it might not be edible, but we cut it open anyway!


It was red!!
Of course I ate it... It was so cute!

Just for the record, I had been at work all day AND it was super humid. Please excuse the hair!


This weekend my eating habits were... less than stellar. I really wanted a cleansing smoothie to start the week. I read about beet smoothies here and decided THAT would be the way to go.
1 beet
a few beet green leaves
cantaloupe
1 tiny frozen banana
1 green apple
almond milk
ground flax seeds

I packed a tupperware for breakfast...
and poured the rest into an ice pop mold!
(The yellow and purple ones hold the ghosts of smoothies past)
And this was dessert!

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It's Tuesday and My Tummy's Full!

So I like alliteration, what can I say?

I started the day off today with another swiss chard smoothie. It had 2 leaves (no stems), a frozen banana, some frozen strawberries, a sprinkling of flax seeds, and a BIG spoonful of peanut butter! It was so good, it tasted sinful!
I had a simple salad lunch with a side of leftovers and a super duper dinner!

Cut up beets, onions, and potatoes and tossed them with olive oil and seasonings

I cooked them all for a different amount of time. I started with 15 minutes of beets, then added the potatoes for 15 minutes, then added the onions for 20 minutes.
What had started out to be a side dish became our whole dinner! We ate all of it and wished there was more!

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