Roasted Carrot and Arugula Salad at Home

I got exposed to COVID last week so I didn’t go to Henry and the Fish in Santa Fe or Vegan Vato in Albuquerque. Those were my two choices for this week.

So in preparation for Thanksgiving, I decided to make a carrot and arugula salad. Usually, I make that wonderful green bean and mushroom soup concoction. Ok, I upgraded it with a recipe that I found that made this holiday side dish much healthier than the previously mentioned one. I used green beans, fresh rosemary, and slivered almonds. That is my go to side. But this year as I was scrolling through the online menu at the Sage Bake House, I saw a roasted carrot and arugula salad(9.70). Wow! That really sounded good. I never thought about that combination. I grow arugula in my garden. Luckily, there was still enough arugula that I could use in this salad. We always seem to have carrots at home because they are one of my very favorite vegetables. The dogs love them, too.

Since I was already firing up the barbecue grill, I decided to grill the carrots and avocado. The fire was not very hot so I was really able to not burn my vegetables. Always a plus. As you can see from this photo, the coals were almost spent.

This is the last of my outside arugula for the season. I’m trying to winter over some so I have some inside for Thanksgiving. The outside arugula was just enough to make a small test salad.

I always time my vegetables when I put them on the grill. The avocados are usually 6 minutes and the carrots depending on the thickness are roasted for a shorter period of time. Since my fire wasn’t very hot, I had to expand the times and just made sure that the carrots turned that beautiful bright orange color. The avocados looked a little more brownish but the backsides were beautiful.

We use some fabulous olive oil from Albuquerque Olive Oil Company and our spices were Florida Seasoned Pepper from Penzeys.

I looked up recipes for carrot and arugula on the web. There were many, many choices. I used a combination of recipes and what we had available in the house. I used the Ambitious Kitchen as my main recipe.

Since we are not crazy about salad dressing, I didn’t make or use any. This salad was tasty enough from the olive oil and seasoning that you really couldn’t tell it was missing.

I didn’t have any figs but I did have pecans and feta cheese. This was definitely use what you have on hand salad.

Sage Bake House and the Ambitious Kitchen both showed their carrots as long planks. I like to cut up my carrots. I also chopped up the pecans. I just added a little bit of feta, not very much but if you are not into cheese, just leave it out. Eventually the avocado was cut up, too. It looked so beautiful in the photo that I forgot to cut it up when I placed it on the table.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all! So far so good, health wise here.