Salad Challenge: Hot and Wild Roasted Veggie Salad

January 7, 2012 By Leanne Vogel July 7, 2015

This weeks’ salad challenge posts: Introduction, Sweet + Creamy Broccoli Salad, Green Goddessphere at Sea, Spinach Salad with Tomato Vinaigrette, Cucumber Dill Kale Salad 5 days, 5 lip-licking, bowl loving, veggie packed salads. How did you do with the challenge? I don’t think I’ve ever ate this many veggies in my life, even when I was vegan. On Thursday; without even realizing it, I had 3 salads. Lunch, dinner, and evening snack. I’m a veggie eatin’ machine!

I remember finding it challenging to get a healthy amount of veggies stuffed in my day while staying excited about what I was eating. Thanks to this challenge; and all of you, I think I’ve finally landed on an approach that works. 1 salad a day for life, baby! It’s amazing how quickly we can adapt to healthy changes if we just take it one step at a time.

One more salad to go for this edition of the salad challenge and I had to squeeze in a recipe that included asparagus. The challenge just couldn’t be complete without a bit of asparagus love.

Did you know that asparagus contains inulin – a prebiotic that doesn’t get broken down by the first segments of our digestive tract? When you eat the spears of green fantasticness, they pass through your digestion, completely undigested until they get to your large intestine, and from there, become a food source for your healthy bacteria. This healthy bacteria helps strengthen our digestion, immune system, aids in nutrient absorption, and can lower our risk of colon cancer, making this salad pretty much… awesome.

Hot and Wild Roasted Veggie Salad

Author: Leanne Vogel

Recipe type: Vegan, Gluten free, Dairy free, Refined sugar-free, Yeast free, Corn free

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 65 mins

Total time: 1 hour 20 mins

Serves: 4

Spice up your grain-based salads with a batch of cayenne roasted veggies. Not a fan of the heat? This salad is just as tasty without it :)

Ingredients

Rice

1.5 cups water
½ cup wild rice, uncooked

Cayenne roasted veggies

1 yellow pepper, diced small
2 carrots, diced small
10 asparagus spears, diced small
1 tablespoon coconut oil, melted
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
pinch cayenne

Maple dressing

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1 tablespoon unpasteurized apple vinegar
1 tablespoon gluten-free mustard
¼ teaspoon himalayan rock salt or herbamare
dash freshly ground pepper
¼ cup sunflower seeds

Instructions

Wash wild rice with hot tap water, drain.
Combine water, rice, and salt in a medium sized saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and cover. Simmer until rice is tender and has absorbed the water, about 30-45 minutes. If you want chewier rice, drain at the 30 minute mark as I did. The rice should be tender but not rolled back or mushy. Once complete, drain and place in a medium sized bowl to cool.
Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400F.
Place pepper, carrot, and asparagus in a cast iron pan and stir to coat with coconut oil. Sprinkle with cinnamon and cayenne. Place in the oven for 20 minutes, or until veggies are tender. Alternatively, you can do this on a stove top, cooking on medium heat for about 8-10 minutes.
Remove veggies from oven and place in the bowl with rice.
In a small dish combine olive oil, maple syrup, vinegar and mustard, salt and pepper. Pour over salad, stir, and top with sunflower seeds.

View Nutritional Information (once on page scroll down)

Are you planning to keep up with 1 salad a day? What was your favorite salad this week? Will see you soon with a new dessert recipe. You didn’t think I could go on like this forever, did you? heh. Mmm sugar.

This entry was tagged: carrot, maple, salad challenge