Sometimes I feel guilty when I come home from work and I don’t want to make dinner for my family.

I don’t think I’m alone.

But then I find a recipe that reminds me that food doesn’t have to be complicated. We can just shove stuff into a food processor to make a salad. And how dang easy is it to dump stuff in a jar and make salad dressing. Dang EASY.

Getting my picky almost 4 year old to try shredded beets? That is the opposite of dang easy.

We can add buttery toast and we can call it a meal. We can add grilled meat and call it a meal for my husband.

We’re eating rainbow colors on a weeknight as we should be. Now, what’s for dessert?

And we’re off!

Ingredient gathering! We’re gonna learn about colors today.

To prevent the whole lot from turning purple, we process in the following order. Purples?! CHECK!

Orange?! Check. This feels like juicing. Weird.

White Cabbage is up.

Apple last!

Look at all of that shredded stuff. It took me like 2 minutes and that includes taking too many photos of it.

Lay it all out on a platter. A rainbow plate.

Dressing time. You can easily omit the Worcestershire & yogurt if you wanna go vegan.

Dressing in a jar. Lid on a jar. Shake the jar. Dressing is born.

Top with chopped mint & parsley. This is the bright green component.

Dressing time!

Put it in the anthropologie bowl you’re obsessed with.

Don’t forget bread. We hafta have carbs.

oh and avocado!

Shredded Rainbow Salad

 

serves 8

recipe adapted from Jamie Oliver via Everyday Food Magazine

• 2 raw medium beets (any color) trimmed, scrubbed & quartered
• 1/4 red cabbage, quartered
• 2 large carrots, scrubbed & trimmed
• 1/4 white cabbage, quartered
• 1 apple, quartered
• 1 cup walnuts, roughly bashed
• 2 handfuls Italian parsley and mint, chopped

for the dressing:

• 1 tablespoon Greek yogurt
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• sea salt & ground pepper
• Worcestershire sauce
• hot sauce

Put a coarse grater attachment into a food processor and push ingredients through in the following order (to stop the beets from staining everything): beets, red cabbage, carrots, white cabbage and apple. (If your food processor is small, do this in batches.) Turn vegetables out onto a platter so get a pile of rainbow colors. Mix the yogurt, mustard, vinegar, and oil, then season with salt, pepper, Worcestershire, and hot sauce.  Add walnuts and herbs and toss everything together until you get a big, beautiful plate of dressed vegetables.