Roasted Vegetable Salad and a Liebster Award!

I’m sure you won’t mind if I rush right through describing this delicious salad so that I can get to my major news announcement. Right? I didn’t think so.

Roasted vegetables are quite heavenly. I’m not sure what took me so long to figure that out, but my preoccupation with roasting vegetables only just began this winter.

I love any any kind of roasted vegetable, but roasting is a particularly wonderful way to prepare winter veggies such as squash, turnips, parsnips or, dare I say, rutabaga. Roasting is such an easy way to bring out the depth of flavor in an otherwise ordinary vegetable.

Even the carnivore liked this salad. I mean, I did add some sliced chicken to his but he said he could have enjoyed it without.

I wanted to make this salad now before I say goodbye to the winter vegetable for a while. Even though today is technically still winter, when it’s 75 degrees and sunny in Western New York, we like to call that “summer”.

This salad is really good so bookmark it for later and then scroll down for my awesome news!

Prepare your vegetables for roasting as shown here.

Roasted Vegetable Salad

Recipe type: Salad

Prep time: 20 mins

Cook time: 20 mins

Total time: 40 mins

Serves: 2

Ingredients

1 turnip, cut into 1-inch cubes
8 asparagus spears, cut into 1 to 2-inch pieces
¾ cup baby carrots or similar size cut carrots
½ red bell pepper, cut into 1 to 2-inch pieces
½ small onion, cut into 1 to 2-inch pieces
1 tablespoon olive oil
½ teaspoon kosher salt
mixed greens or baby spinach, enough for 2 large salads
balsamic dressing
⅓ cup feta cheese, divided
kalamata olives for garnish, optional

Instructions

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.
Prep the vegetables and then toss them together with the olive oil and kosher salt. Spread onto baking sheet in an even layer. You can line the baking sheet with parchment paper for easier clean-up.
Roasted the vegetables for about 20 minutes or until nicely caramelized but not burnt. Stir the vegetables a couple times during roasting.
Chill vegetables to room temperature before adding to the salad.
Toss your selected greens with balsamic dressing to coat. Add vegetables to greens and gently toss once more.
Portion the salads (2 for a main dish or 4 for a side) and top each with an equal amount of feta cheese.
Garnish with olives if desired.

Notes

Feel free to play with this recipe and use whatever veggies you have on hand. It would be equally delicious with beets, squash or sweet potatoes. Maybe even rutabaga. I wouldn’t know, I’ve never tried it.

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Drumroll please…

Now I’m super excited to announce that I’ve received the Liebster Blog Award.

I guess this means you like me. You really like me.

The Liebster is awarded to new blogs with less than 200 subscribers in order to acknowledge that they are worth checking out. I’ve read that it originates from Germany (making it that much more awesome) “liebster” meaning dearest or beloved.

Even before I had a blog of my own I used to see the Liebster Award on other blogs and I kinda coveted it. I always thought it would be pretty cool to have my own so I have to truly thank Brianne at Cupcakes and Kale Chips for nominating me!

There are a few conditions to accepting this award:

Thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog and link back to them.
Copy and paste the blog award on your blog.
Present the Liebster Blog Award to 5 blogs of 200 followers or less who you feel deserves to be noticed.
Let them know they have been chosen by leaving a comment on their blog.

In no particular order I’d like to pay a Liebster forward to the following five blogs.

I have know way of really knowing exactly how many subscribers each of these blogs has, so if any of you have thousands of followers already I hope you won’t be offended. I just think you’re neat-o.