Hi Everyone,

I’ve been meaning to do a recipe post for a while but I just haven’t had a chance to get around to it! I have a few recipes that I’m dying to share over the next few weeks but when I made this recipe for dinner last night I thought, this is so quick, easy and tasty I just have to share it before I forget!

I don’t know about you guys but my food brain is mainly influenced by the weather. When its cold and rainy I crave stews and potatoes, and anything with a heavy sauce or gravy. When the sun is shining I want lighter food, fresh flavours and lots of colour! As the weather has been a bit nicer the last few days, I have been craving salads and even BBQ style food and definitely food that doesn’t take too long to prep and make because I want to spend as much time relaxing in the sun rather than slaving in the kitchen.

Being really honest, I haven’t done my weekly shop yet so there’s not much in my fridge. I had no intention of doing a grocery shop last night so I had a quick look to see what I had in the freezer before I went to work.

There were some lamb escalopes that had been sitting there for a while so I figured I could do something with them so I took them out to defrost. In the fridge I spotted a sweet potato, some baby tomatoes, salad leaves and a courgette, grand! Looks like I had the makings of something. Now bare in mind, this is basically all that was in my fridge. A couple of other random bits were in there but the fridge is practically empty, so really I’m just using stuff I had leftover from other meals I’d made. But thats ok by me, I hate food waste!

Anyway, on the way home from work I stopped into my local Centra to see if they had anything I could add to bulk up the meal a bit. I got a red and yellow pepper and some Feta cheese. I was gonna get some quinoa, but I remembered I had the end of a box at home (saved myself €7, that stuff is not cheap in Centra!).

Last night’s dinner was thrown together in pure convenience but in the end it worked so well. Sometimes when you are down to your last few bits in your fridge all you need is a bit of imagination to put together something tasty! Although I really need to do a shop now… you know when you use the last of your garlic you are really scraping the barrel!

Roast Veg and Quinoa Salad

Serves 2 as a main, 4 as a side.

Ingredients

Coconut Frylight (or oil of choice)

1 Medium sweet potato (or half a very large one)

1 Courgette

1 Red pepper

1 Yellow pepper

6 Cherry tomatoes

1 Garlic clove

1 Lemon

Mixed lettuce leaves of choice

Handful of sultanas

Half a cup of quinoa

Salt and pepper for seasoning

45g of Feta cheese

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees.
2. Cut sweet potato into bite sized cubes, spray with Frylight (or drizzle with oil of choice), season with salt and pepper and place into large oven dish and put into preheated oven for 20 mins.
3. Put quinoa on to cook, use packet instructions. Usually takes 20 mins or so.
4. Chop up peppers and courgette into large chunks and place in large bowl.
5. Half baby tomatoes and place in bowl with peppers and courgettes
6. Cut clove of garlic into 4 and place in the bowl with the veg.
7. Spray veg mix with Frylight season with salt and pepper and toss so everything is covered evenly.
8. After the sweet potato has been cooking for 20 mins, transfer the veg mix to the oven dish, mix with sweet potato and cook for a further 15 mins.
9. Check veg after 15 mins, may need a stir and further 5 mins depending on your dish and oven.
10. Once the veg is cooked, remove from the oven and allow to stand for 5 mins to cool slightly.
11. Once veg is cooled, place 2 large handfulls of mixed leaves on top along with the sultanas and quinoa. Squeeze the juice of the lemon over the top of everything and mix everything together.
12. Crumble Feta cheese over the top.

I served this as a main with lamb but you could use any meat you like. This is also a great side if you wanted to take something along to a family dinner or BBQ as it can be prepared in advance and would be lovely cold too and you can easily double the recipe.

I hope you like this one or maybe it will give you your own inpso. Either way, happy cooking 🙂

Pinkladyxo

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