I know that summer is now officially (?) over. But the weather is still feeling pretty summery and humid to me. It’s days like these where I can’t help but want a simple tasty salad. And I’m not really a huge lettuce person – I like my salads full of other things that just happen to be on top of a few lettuce leaves. I had some golden beets left over from our CSA delivery and decided they would make a great addition to a salad. And so I looked around at what other ingredients were in my fruit bowl and came up with this concoction – roasted beets with peaches, tomato and avocado in a roasted garlic balsamic reduction. Yum!

What you’ll need:

• 6 small to medium sized golden beets
• 1 ripe peach
• 1/2 large avocado (or a whole small one – mine happened to be ginormous)
• 1 medium tomato
• 1/2 head of mesclun lettuce
• 1 clove roasted garlic
• 1 1/2 TBS balsamic reduction
• 1 TBS hot water

You can pre-roast your beets at any time. I chose to make mine and then run some other errands – which was admittedly a bit of a mistake because they did over cook a bit. But if you don’t have a short attention span, you should be fine. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Skin and chop your beets into bite-size pieces. Toss the beets in olive oil and a little sea salt. Place them on a greased baking sheet and roast for 25-35 minutes, or until they are easily pierced with a fork. Set them aside to cool.

Cut the tomato, peaches and avocado and place in large mixing bowl. Tear or chop the lettuce to your liking and add to the bowl. Whisk the balsamic reduction with water to dilute a bit. Add the roasted garlic and whisk until the garlic is evenly distributed throughout the dressing. Add the beets to the bowl. Drizzle the dressing over everything and mix with your hands or a spatula (trying not to mush the avocado). Top with a bit of fresh ground pepper.

I only thought of this after the salad was gone, but some toasted walnuts on top would have been another great addition and added protein.