Roasted Beet Salad (adapted from KCTS Cooks Salads)

• 4 medium beets, tops trimmed
• 1tbsp olive oil
• salt and pepper
• 8 cups mixed baby greens (these can be left out in order to just make a side dish with aspargus/beets/walnuts/etc)
• 1 apple (I used Graventstein from my apple tree)
• 1/2 cups walnuts
• 3 tbsp sugar ( I used organic unrefined cane sugar)
• 6-8 asparagus spears
• 1/4 cup blue cheese

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Toss beets with olive oil, salt, pepper. Place in shallow baking dish and bake for 40-60 minutes (until tender). Cool beets slightly and then remove skins and cut into 1/2 inch cubes.

Wash and drain greens and cut apple into small chunks. Place sugar in a frying pan and heat until melted. Add walnuts and stir to coat. Turn nuts onto a lightly oiled dish to cool, then coarsely chop.

Wash and trim asparagus, then cut into pieces and blanch 1-2 minutes and then plunge into cold water. Drain.

Combine all elements together, drizzle with orange vinaigrette and sprinkle with blue cheese.

Orange Vinaigrette

• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1/4 cup fresh orange juice
• 1/2 tsp orange zest
• 1 shallot, peeled and minced
• salt and pepper, to taste
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil

Combine all ingredients and whisk in oil.

On another note…I start my full-time cooking school experience on Monday!!!!! (Before I was only taking one class). Now I really get to step into the kitchen and learn and I couldn’t be more excited….and slightly nervous! You may have noticed a new tab at the top of my blog, entitled ‘culinary’. By clicking this tab, you will be located to posts purely about my cooking school experience. I will continue to blog about food + recipes (of course!!!) but I hope you also will enjoy reading about the mayhem I will create for myself in cooking school bahahah. They don’t know what they’ve gotten themselves into!!

Yes…that is me as a young’n with who knows what on my face (let’s just hope it’s face paint). For some reason I always closed one eye in pictures when I was a kid….

One of my all-time favourite foods is butternut squash. I love it simply roasted in olive oil with some pepper and lots of sea salt! I got through a lot of squash throughout the fall and winter. While attending a local summer market that is held every couple of weeks, I found a vendor selling delicious thai sauces. Man, was he ever generous with the samples!!! I ended up buying a Sesame BBQ sauce and a Yellow Coconut Curry sauce, and my boyfriend bought one of our favourites- Green Coconut Curry Sauce. We ate the Sesame BBQ sauce over stir fried vegetables and tofu and it was wonderful. I had a butternut squash to use up and at the suggestion of the vendor, I tried the Yellow Curry sauce over it. It was DIVINE. The sauce had a nice kick to it and all the flavour from the roasted squash went perfectly- yet exotically with it. The sauces come from Thai Princess and they are available on Granville Island in Vancouver, or at Whole Foods in Vancouver. I really recommend picking some of their sauces up if you are in the area- they can be frozen for up to six months and are perfect for days when you are short on time around dinner.

Roasted Butternut Squash

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Peel squash and cut up in small cubes, place on parchment-lined tray

Drizzle with olive oil and season with pepper and salt.

Cook for 40-45 minutes until squash is nicely carmelized. Toss once or twice throughout the process.

If you have a sauce, warm it up on the stove and pour over squash. Enjoy!!

One of my favourite memories from Thailand was when my boyfriend and I (as well as a bunch of other people) were feeding a group of monkeys on a beach. All of a sudden, one of the monkeys went running across the little river and climbed right up my leg and onto my HEAD! I absolutely adore animals so while I should have been scared, I was so excited! After getting plenty of peanut shells and banana in my hair (ick!!), he was coaxed back onto the ground.