Beetroot, rocket and walnut salad

At the moment in case you can't tell I am feeling like salads - big time! 3 things  I really like in salads (although not necessarily all at once!) are feta, beetroot and thai style dressings. Beetroot is yummy grated raw into salads, but even yummier roasted. Here is a salad I mixed up last night:

Beetroot, rocket and walnut salad

3 beetroot, peeled and cut into thick batons (wear gloves if you don't want purple hands)
3 big carrots, peeled and cut into thick batons
1 big red onions, cut into 8 wedges
A few sprigs of thyme
Olive oil

Half a bag of rocket
1/2 c coarsely chopped walnuts

Dressing:
3 T balsalmic vinegar
3 T olive oil
1 T brown sugar

1. Heat the oven to 180 C and roast the beetroot, carrot and onions in olive oil sprinkled with thyme leaves. Thyme leaves are really easy to get off the stem if you run your fingers against the direction the leaves are growing in, they will just fall off. Bake for 40 mins, until beetroot is tender but still firm. Stir half way through roasting.

2. Cool roast veges.
3. Mix dressing ingredients together in a jar.
4. Toss all the salad ingredients together.
5. We had ours with coleslaw and good old sausies in bread!!!!

Pre-packaged coleslaw

I don't know about you but there is only one way I like cabbage... in a coleslaw. I am very open to alternative edible serving suggestions! If I buy a cabbage I use about a quarter of it in a coleslaw and it makes enough for about twenty people, and the rest of the cabbage rots in the fridge. I also hate grating the ingredients for the coleslaw, and can't bring myself to use the food processor as it wastes half of the vegetables because it can't chop or grate the dregs of each vegetable.

I am not usually one for pre-packaged stuff. I laugh at those little carrots and chopped up apples - waste of packaging and money. BUT I have over the last couple of months become partial to pre-packaged coleslaw. It only costs the same as a pack of mesculun leaves, I don't have to chop the veges up, I don't waste three quarters of a cabbage (which takes up half my vege bin) and I can control how much and what dressing goes into it so it isn't like delicatessan coleslaw where you might as well take a tub of lard and eat that.

So if you feel similarly to me in that you enjoy coleslaw but hate the preparation and wastage, then give it a try. Any old brand will do it doesn't have to be the one pictured.