Balsamic Beet Salad!

There are so many great qualities to beetroot to keep us fit and healthy, take a look at this infographic from rawforbeauty.com.

Our beet salad was a bit of a friday night treat so there were a couple of cheeky ingredients, bacon lardons and feta cheese. These ingredients massively increase the fat and salt content, so to make this more healthy just remove those ingredients!
However, did you know that feta has 1/3 of the fat and calories of cheddar, and if you buy a low fat version this can third again! So if you're craving a cheesy fix as we were, feta is the was to go!

Balsamic Beet Salad 

(recipe makes 2 dinners and left overs for lunch!)

Ingredients

• 2 fresh beets
• 1 red onion
• half sweet potato
• 4 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 2 tbsp pumpkin seeds
• Small block of feta and one small pack of smokey bacon lardons (if you've been a really good healthy student all week and are feeling a bit cheeky!)
• Whatever fresh salad ingredients you fancy/ have in the fridge! We had a 3 handfuls of watercress and rocket salad, 6 halved cherry tomatoes, cucumber sliced and quartered and slices of avocado 

Instructions

1. Pre-heat your oven to gas mark 5/190°C/375°F
2. Peel the outer skins off the red onion, half sweet potato and beets then chop into chunks (About 2cm cubes)- WARNING- beets are very messy, do not use your housemate's chopping board (oops!)
3. Put the chopped vedge into an oven tray, cover with 3 tbsp of balsamic vinegar and add and pinch of salt and pepper then mix it all up!
4. Pop the vedge mix in the oven for about 60 mins (until soft), makes sure you mix it round a few times in between so it doesn't burn.
5. When the roasted vedge is nearly ready, chuck the bacon into a pan and cook until crispy- if you have a good non-stick pan no oil will be needed, if not we recommend the 1cal spray!
6. When the bacon is crisped up, throw in the pumpkin seeds to heat through, they will start jumping around the pan when they need to be taken off the heat!
7. Chuck all your fresh salad ingredients into a big mixing bowl. 
8. Remove the roasted vedge form the oven, mix in the feta and leave to cool a little.
9. Put all the ingredients in the mixing bowl with the remaining tbsp of balsamic vinegar and serve!