Anatomy of a Salad

In an attempt to balance my need to not throw any more slimy veggies into the compost bin AND use the anise-scented fennel that we got in last week's share,  I decided to make a hot salad.  Reasons:

1. It would use lettuce
2. I could roast the fennel, diluting the anise-y-ness.
3. Scott had a soccer game, so he wasn't going to eat something very heavy.
4. I was being kind of lazy.

In addition to the fennel, I chopped up some beets and the radishes that I could have sworn we had the other day but wasn't able to find until last night.  All of these were tossed in a little olive oil and thrown in the oven after I attempted to make croutons with the last few end pieces of bread that I had, sitting and taking up space in the fridge.  

I cut the pieces up into little squares and tossed them in a bowl with olive oil, cracked black pepper, salt, garlic powder, and onion powder.  Then I threw them in the oven for about 15 minutes at 400°.

a leeeeetle crispy...

The good news is that I made enough croutons to go on the salad.  The bad news is that I still ended up burning over half of them.

Still terrified that I would suffer through a licorice salad, I roasted the veggies until the fennel was crispy and kind of black.  At least the beets were tender, right?

Then, I constructed.

Red leaf lettuce from our CSA

Carrots from our CSA

Craisins® (from Costco - we go through a lot of these)

Mandarin oranges from the farmer's market

Slices of string cheese that HRH has decided she doesn't like

Croutons - extra crunchy!

Sunflower seeds

The hot veggies

I finished mine off with a sprinkling of parmesan and some olive oil & balsamic vinegar.  Scott left his "naked."

I was impressed, but I was only able to taste the beets, so I feel kind of like I cheated in my first use of fennel.  We'll see what happens next time - maybe I'll get a little more gutsy. 

And maybe not.