New Recipe--Roasted Corn and Beet Salad

Hey friends. So, I kinda made up a salad recipe tonight, and it turned out way better than it had any right to be. I know I'll forget the entire recipe if I don't write it down somewhere, so here it shall be written.

I give you full right to ignore this post.

So, I had lunch at Cannella's. I got a pastrami sandwich that came with a side salad. And in that side salad was a slice of beet. I've never cooked with a beet, so on my drive home, I grabbed myself some from Harmons.

Once home, I threw some corn, husks on, in the oven for about 15 minutes to roast. In the meantime, I chopped off both ends of the beet, and put them in a roasting pan, with just a little bit of water, covered it with foil, and slid them into the oven for about 35 minutes. They came out a beautifully deep red, and still just a bit firm.

Next, corn was cut off the cob, a half a beet was chopped up, and those went into a bowl along with some chopped swiss chard and green leaf lettuce. In the meantime, I quick boiled the beet greens (putting the stalks in for a few minutes longer than the greens) just until they wilted. Those got drained and squeezed dry, then thrown in the bowl as well.

Lastly, the dressing. I had arugula to use, so I grabbed a handful of that and put it into a food processor with a few leaves of basil, some pine nuts, salt, pepper, a splash of orange juice, and enough olive oil til the consistency looked dressing-y.

Guess what? It was a lovely, hearty, tasty and bright, dinner salad. So, so happy! And healthy!

Happy eating and kitchen-creating, friends!

Update: a made the salad again, and it was even better with a few changes. This time, I finely shredded the arugula and basil and added that to the bowl. Then, I made a dressing out of spicy mustard, orange juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper, which got tossed well with all the veggies. Lastly, I homemade some croutons out of wheat bread, that was buttered and sprinkled with garlic powder, parsley, salt, and pepper. Yum!

Pad Thai Noodles-Two ways

On my drive home a couple days ago, I stopped by the Southeast Market to get some pad thai noodles and cilantro. (side note: the Southeast Market's cilantro was the same price as Smith's and about triple the amount! Awesome.) I had a serious craving for comfort food and a little spice, and what better way than noodles and chili-garlic sauce?! I found this recipe for Vietnamese Noodle Salad a week or so prior and was dying to try it. Perfect.

I changed mine up a bit, using pad thai noodles instead of the rice noodles. I also julienned some zucchini and orange bell pepper instead of the cucumber, used LOTS of cilantro instead of mint, and topped it with chopped peanuts. And it was the perfect summer comfort salad! Yum!

For today's dinner, I had half the pad thai noodles (undressed) that needed to be used, plus some leftover barbecued beef from Sunday's dinner. So I thought, beef pad thai!

I sliced up a red bell pepper, some onion, and garlic and sauteed it for a bit. Then I added a little water, chili-garlic sauce, peanut butter (in lieu of chopped peanuts on top), and soy sauce to the pan, as well as my barbecued beef. The noodles were throw in next and mixed all together. Then a little lime juice and cilantro topped it off.

Result: so delicious! I was worried the barbecue sauce in the beef would throw off the pad thai flavor, but it gave the noodles a lot of depth. I'm rather proud of my new recipe.

It doesn't look very pretty, but promise, it tastes good.

Moral of the story: next time you want comfort food, think pad thai noodles!