Roasted Vegetable and Quinoa Salad

Disclaimer alert: This dish is obnoxiously healthy. Proceed at your own risk.

I’ve been known to be somewhat of a disclaimer queen in my day.

“These dusty baseboards are not my fault! It’s like the freaking Dust Bowl part 2 out there.”

“I tried to vacuum Charlie’s hair off those pillows but homegirl just gets everywhere!”

“I know nothing about the wine in the birdbath.”

I’m telling you this as a warning. I might have a few disclaimers in this post. This is my disclaimer disclaimer.

OKAY THAT WAS FUNNY.

What’s worse is that I’m not even using the word 100% properly. I’m pretending it’s the word EXCUSE. But I will forever deny that I know the difference!

Are you as confused as I am?

First of all, see those grains in the photo above the word pretending? Uhhh, that’s not quinoa. I totally grabbed a can of whatever and started boilin’ away. Few minutes pass. La dee da. I go to check for spirals. Where are my spirals? WHO TOOK THE SPIRALS? I taste a few of the boiled thingies and ohhh hooo hooo. That ain’t nothing short of MILLET, y’alls. Not that I have problems with the millet. I was just expecting quinoa. You know like when you take a sip of milk but you’re watching someone else sip wine so you expect the wine taste to appear in your mouth, but instead the milk taste does and you have an F5 level freak attack thinking your taste buds have taken the first bus to Mexico?

This post is already so long. But I deny any responsibility for it!

All to say, I started over and boiled the quinoa, and life was happy and normal once again.

Also, roasting green beans is pretty awesome. I’d never done it before. They shrivel up just a little, and their flavor densifies (I’m getting a squiggly line and ignoring it), especially with a hundred billion cloves of garlic all around it.

And then when you take those roasted garlic cloves and bleeeetz them up with some lemon juice and olive oil, shuuuuuut yer life.

And I’m sorry, but when you sprinkle the whole dern thing with chopped almonds and hazelnuts? And fresh parsley? Are you shutting all of the doors and holding all of the phones? Yeah.

Oh, see how the roasted beets turned the quinoa 50 shades of pink? I had nothing to do with that!

Yeah, that disclaimer didn’t work at all.

Oh hey, eat this!

Roasted Vegetable and Quinoa Salad:

What it took for 4:

* 3 small beets, rinsed and cut into a small dice
* 3 small carrots, rinsed and cut into a small dice
* 12 oz green beans
* 6 cloves garlic, peeled
* 2/3 cup quinoa
* 4-5 Tbs. extra-virgin olive oil, divided
* 2 Tbs. lemon juice
* 1/3 cup chopped almonds and hazelnuts (or whatever nuts you like! sorry)
* 1/3 cup chopped parsley
* coarse salt and freshly ground pepper

Preheat oven to 375.

Arrange the beets, carrots, beans and garlic on a rimmed baking sheet. Drizzle with 2 Tbs. oil and toss with a pinch of salt and pepper. Roast for 35 to 45 minutes, or until freaking glorious. Check that garlic. If it needs to come out a little early, that’s fine.

In the meantime, cook your quinoa in boiling water until you see little spirals, about 20 minutes.

Transfer the garlic to a small food processor, and add the remaining oil and lemon juice. Blitz with another small pinch of salt until it’s as blended as you can get it. Taste it. Riiiiiiiiiiidiculous.

In a large bowl, combine the roasted veggies, quinoa, garlic dressing, chopped nuts and parsley. Toss, toss, toss.

Serve, serve, serve.

Inhale, inhale, inhale.

You want to disclaim your fist in my face.