Roasted Beet and Spinach Salad with Candied Walnuts Topped With Honey Balsamic Dressing

These are red beets; I used yellow beets in the salad below. Both are so tasty!

 It's so hard to be healthy, eat salads all the time and keep getting excited about them! You can only eat so many salads so I try to get creative and change it up often.  I have just discovered three things about BEETS: they are SO EASY to bake; they taste like CANDY and they are super HEALTHY for you! This vibrant vegetable has something called 'betalains' which provide antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and detoxification support for our bodies. They also slow down tumors from growing and prevent certain cancers. Cool. 

Make A Salad for One or Many!

Ready In: 1 Hour

Wine Pairing: Pinot Noir

Ingredients:

• Beets
• EVOO
• Spinach Salad, washed and dried (or you can buy it ready to go!)
• Feta Cheese (Goat cheese works too)
• Sliced Purple Onion
• Candied or Plain Walnuts

Method:

Preparing the Beets:

• Preheat the oven to 350 F.
• You can bake as many as you want at a time. Pull off greens from the beet and cut off the bottom pointy part. 
• No need to peel- just scrub the outer part of the beet then coat with a little EVOO. Wrap each beet in tin foil and place on baking sheet. 
• Bake for about 50 min or until beet is soft when you poke it with a fork. Let cool then the peel will come off easily (or you can slice it off).  Cut into bite size chunks. It's that easy!

Preparing the Honey Balsamic:

• Two parts Balsamic Vinaigrette and one part honey. Sprinkle in some pepper and whisk together.

Preparing the Salad:

• Throw all ingredients together. Drizzle with Honey Balsamic and toss!

I always pair my afternoon salads with some low-fat cottage cheese on the side.

Yummmmm!