CSA Week 3

Another week, another round of awesome produce thanks to Marshall's Fenway CSA!  I wish I could say that I did something fun with the strawberries, but again I wound up simply savoring every bite :)  The asparagus also just got simply roasted with some extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper and thoroughly enjoyed!

With all the broccoli last week, I made Melissa Clark's Roasted Broccoli with Shrimp.  I'm pretty sure this was a recipe I found thanks to Rose-Anne, but I couldn't find where she mentioned it, so thanks hun!  Loved the lemon zest, coriander and cumin used to spice up a pretty simple dish.

Next up were the beets and carrots...  and kale ;)  Since the oven was already on, I couldn't resist throwing in my beets and carrots for a good roasting.  They ended up on another delicious massaged kale salad!

Massaged Kale Salad w/Roasted Carrots & Beets

Serves 2-4

I included amounts here only as a rough guideline, feel free to add as few or many veggies as you'd like, or change up the toppings!

2 small bunches of carrots

1 bunch of beets (3 good size)

2 medium bunches of kale

2 ripe avocados

coarse sea salt

3-4T lemon juice

2-4oz goat cheese

Sunflower seeds (or other nut/seed of your choice)

Preheat oven to 400deg.  Wash carrots and cut into chunks on the bias.  Add carrots to a medium bowl and toss with 1-2T (melted) coconut oil, salt and pepper.  Wash and trim off beet tops (save them to use for sauteed greens or another recipe coming soon!).  Wrap beets in aluminum foil.  Spread carrots on baking sheet and add package of beets.  Place baking sheet in the oven and bake until nice and roasted.  The beets will take a bit longer if they're large, to test simply pierce with a fork- if the fork slides in and out easily, they're done!  Remove from the oven and set aside.  Once the beets have cooled a bit, peel and chop into bite-size pieces.

While the veggies are roasting, wash the kale (I do this in a large bowl of water to make sure to get the grit from the leaves) and tear into a large bowl.  Add the flesh of the avocados (I usually roughly dice into the bowl), a sprinkle of coarse sea salt and lemon juice.  Rub around with your hands, trying to coat all of the kale with the creamy avocado flesh.  Set aside.

To assemble the salads, plate massaged kale, then top with roasted beets and carrots.  I finished mine off with crumbled goat cheese and sunflower seeds, but feel free to use whatever combination of cheese and nuts or seeds that you'd like!

I still had plenty of roasted beets after this, and wound up doing something a little crazy...  a roasted beet smoothie!  Different, but still pretty tasty ;)  Not to mention gorgeous- something that color must be good for you, right?

Roasted Beet Smoothie

1c almond milk

cinnamon

vanilla protein powder (optional)

1/2-1c roughly chopped roasted beets

1 frozen banana

Place ingredients in high speed blender in order listed and blend away until smooth!

Craziest thing you've ever thrown in a smoothie?

Hope everyone's weekend is off to a fabulous start!