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Roasted Vegetable Grain Salad + $100 GIVEAWAY!

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Roasted Vegetable Grain Salad with Avocado, Feta, and Walnut | sharedappetite.comA balanced lifestyle has never tasted so good with this Roasted Vegetable Grain Salad with Avocado, Feta, and Walnuts, featuring Marzetti® Simply Dressed® Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing.

Chris… some people eat to live, and others live to eat.”

I can’t even begin to count the number of times my mom told me this throughout my childhood.  I have always been on the pudgy side of the weight spectrum. Always. Man, I just absolutely love to eat. Always have, always will. My metabolism has never been able to keep up with my ambitious food intake.  If only there was an app for that.

And especially now that I’m in my 30s… forget it. So with our Baby Olivia expected to arrive in a short while, it’s important to me now more than ever to be on track with a balanced lifestyle.  Exercise regularly (you know how I love to exercise… but I’m doing it!).  Eat the right stuff.  And this ridiculously easy and super flavorful Roasted Vegetable Grain Salad with Avocado, Feta, and Walnuts lets me do just that.

Roasted Vegetable Grain Salad with Avocado, Feta, and Walnut | sharedappetite.comWhat I really love about this salad is that you can totally customize it with whatever you have lying around the pantry and refrigerator:

  • I used some wild rice and whole wheat couscous, but you could easily swap in some quinoa, brown rice, farro, lentils… you get the idea.
  • My roasted veggies here are sweet potato, butternut squash, and beets (and grapes… yes, I know they are a fruit).  Have some other veggie love? Rock it. Own it. Embrace it.
  • Mix-in walnuts, crumbled feta, chopped parsley, and avocado.  Or don’t.  You could easily use cherry tomatoes, roasted red peppers, olives, pine nuts, goat cheese… get creative and build some serious flavor.

But of course, the real star of this show that bring all these flavors together?  This awesome balsamic vinaigrette. Roasted Vegetable Grain Salad with Avocado, Feta, and Walnut | sharedappetite.com Marzetti® Simply Dressed® Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing is hands down my new favorite balsamic dressing.  The flavor is simple, pure, and pretty darn amazing.

And you know what makes me feel really good about serving this dressing to Asheley (and ipso facto Baby Olivia)?  When I flip the bottle around and look at the ingredient list, it’s short.  AND, I can actually read and understand all the ingredients on the label.   It’s got none of that preservative, HFCS, or artificial flavor/color garbage.

Marzetti® has some legit history.  They began as a family restaurant in Columbus, Ohio more than 125 years ago.  Customers were all about their dressings, so they began packaging and selling them in stores during the 1950s.  You can find Marzetti® Simply Dressed® Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing, as well as a whole bunch of other great flavors, in the refrigerated section of your local grocery store.

And then you can get your whole grain and veggies on… and be living the balanced lifestyle dream 🙂 Roasted Vegetable Grain Salad with Avocado, Feta, and Walnut | sharedappetite.com

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Roasted Vegetable Grain Salad

★★★★★

4.7 from 20 reviews
  • Yield: 4 to 6 servings 1x
Print Recipe

Ingredients

Scale
  • 3 cups cooked black or wild rice
  • 2 cups cooked whole wheat couscous
  • 1 small butternut squash, peeled and seeded
  • 1 medium sweet potato
  • 2 beets, peeled
  • 2 cups red-skinned seedless grapes
  • Olive oil
  • Kosher salt
  • 1/3 cup chopped walnuts
  • 1/2 cup crumbled Feta cheese
  • 1/4 cup parsley, chopped
  • 1/3 to 1/2 cup Marzetti® Simply Dressed® Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing
  • 2 avocados, sliced

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Chop butternut squash, sweet potato, and beets into uniform 1/4″ – 1/2″ pieces. Place vegetables on separate aluminum foil lined baking sheets, drizzle lightly with olive oil, and season with Kosher salt. Toss to coat and make sure they are in a single layer. Roast until tender, about 20-30 minutes (cooking time will vary depending upon how large the vegetables were chopped… squash and sweet potato cooks more quickly than beets typically).
  2. Place grapes in a single layer on an aluminum foil lined baking sheet. Drizzle lightly with olive oil and season with Kosher salt. Toss to coat and roast until grapes wrinkle and collapse slightly, about 20-25 minutes.
  3. Grains and roasted vegetables should not be piping hot when assembling salad. It’s best if they’ve had a chance to cool a bit (room temperature is totally great). Combine rice, couscous, desired amount of roasted vegetables and grapes (about 2 to 3 cups), chopped walnuts, crumbled feta, and chopped parsley in a large bowl. Drizzle in balsamic vinaigrette, toss to coat, and divide among bowls. Top with sliced avocado and devour immediately.

Notes

Feel free to substitute other grains as desired. Quinoa, brown rice, farro, lentils, etc. will all work great!

Although I’ve given approximate amounts of each ingredient, please customize this salad to your liking. Want more walnuts or feta cheese? Go for it. Less parsley? Rock on. And I would suggest starting with a smaller amount of dressing, mix it in, and taste. Keep adding a little more, tasting along the way, until you reach that perfect balance.

You’ll probably have more roasted vegetables and grapes than you need. Refrigerate unused portion for up to several days and use for something else (mix in to some pasta one night, make some crostini, etc.).

Roasted Vegetable Grain Salad with Avocado, Feta, and Walnut | sharedappetite.com

How will you use Marzetti® Simply Dressed® refrigerated salad dressings to make fresh and simple meals for you and your family? Leave a comment below to enter for a chance to win a $100 Visa gift card.

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This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. The notification email will come directly from BlogHer via the sweeps@blogher email address. You will have 72 hours to respond; otherwise a new winner will be selected.

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This sweepstakes runs from 4/1/2015 – 5/31/2015.

Be sure to visit the Marzetti® Simply Dressed® brand page on BlogHer.com where you can read other bloggers’ posts!

 

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. GAH! SO much love for this whole post! 1. What a fun video!! So happy to see ya doing one!
    2. This salad. The YUM and HEALTH factor is off da chartz! I love all those grains with the creamy dressing and avocado. Pinning!

    Reply

  2. Go Chris! Love the video. It’s so awesome. I’m way too scared yet to do videos.
    So excited for this sweet new little girl you’ll soon be holding. I can’t wait for pictures!

    Have a great week!

    Reply

  5. Other than a salad, I think the balsamic would be great to add to a simmer sauce of pork medallions with mushrooms!

    Reply

  6. I totally want this for lunch right now. I would prob do a very similar salad (grains + roasted veggies + avocado + cheese) to use that delicious balsamic dressing!

    Reply

  9. What a delicious and great looking salad! I’m love the roasted grapes! I am going to use the all natural Ranch dressing to make my Cold Chicken Pasta salad that I make this time of the year! This Marzetti dressing is the best tasting!

    ★★★★★

    Reply

  11. Salads are tricky for me, because I’m suspicious of vegetables and my husband is a foodie, so I can’t just throw lettuce in a bowl (unless it’s got Caesar dressing on it). Having a really interesting salad dressing will make the perfect-salad puzzle a little easier!

    Reply

  12. Our office has a “Salad Club” in the summer months. Each of us signs up to bring one part of a salad, then each person participating has all the makings right here at work for a great salad! We often have themes like mexican or southwest or Italian type salads. This Marzetti dressings offer lots of variety and choices AND taste great!

    Reply

  15. other then the obvioius, (which is salad) I would mix this with a couple spices and make a chicken sauce and make some sort of baked chicken.

    Thank you !:)

    Reply

  19. This looks delicious!! I love grain salads – they’re one of the few healthy meals that don’t leave me hungry in like 5 minutes. I love your mix and match ideas! 😀

    Reply

  21. I would marinate chicken using the Marzetti ginger sesame simply dressed salad dressing to make a Asian chicken wrap with bell peppers and broccoli slaw. I would then use the dressing as a dip for the wrap.

    Reply

  25. Duuuuuude, you’re a natural in front of the camera. I’m telling ya, you can have a career in television!
    The video is great and so is the recipe.
    #WolfpackAnchorman

    Reply

  27. Oh darn – everyone’s talking about a video and it’s not loading for me. 🙁 Great looking salad, though!!! Gorg. I’d use the dressing – very ‘boringly’ on my regular everyday salad that I eat for lunch. I eat very healthfully, but I’m a super lazy eater. Haha. Great post & giveaway!! 🙂

    ★★★★★

    Reply

  30. I would use the Pomegranate Salad Dressing to make a spring fruit salad for my family.

    ★★★★★

    Reply

  32. This is my kind of salad!!! Absolutely gorgeous! Pinned! And I hear you on the metabolism. Mine needs to get with the program! I was just telling my brother last night that if I found a genie one of my 3 wishes would be to have the metabolism of a 15 year old boy. Just sayin’.

    Reply

  35. I would use Marzetti Simply Dressed® refrigerated salad dressings to make steak sandwiches with avocado.
    tcarolinep at gmail dot com

    Reply

  42. “my ambitious food intake” – Seriously I just laughed for like 10 minutes, such an incredibly simple, funny way of putting things! well done Chris 🙂

    this salad looks INSANE – I am so about grains right now so this is just the kind of meal I need to make for myself. pinned!

    Reply

  44. I would use the Marzetti® Light Caesar Vinaigrette Dressing to make a delicious Baby Romaine Salad for my family

    ★★★★★

    Reply

  45. When it came to weight I think I was rather on the lucky side if you will. I have the feeling that I can eat a lot without putting on (much) weight. It’s often really body type depended I think!
    I didn’t realize there is such thing as whole wheat couscous! WIll have to look for it 🙂

    Reply

  46. WAIT! How did I miss that you announced your baby’s name?!?! Olivia! It’s so cute – I love it. Also – this grain salad sounds like something I’d love just as much as Olivia:) I could use some healthy-side-of-things recipes right now too haha.

    Reply

  50. I would use this Balsamic dressing to marinate chicken and grill it up! That with some corn on the cob and watermelon sounds perfect for a summer BBQ!

    Reply

  51. Aaw loved this post and your video! Olivia is such a pretty baby girl’s name 🙂 Haha my husband said the same thing about dating too! Love grain salads and this one is packed with so much yumminess! It looks fantastic!

    Reply

  57. I’ll make a big salad with greens & tomatoes & cukes & avocado & kidney beans & dried fruit and let everyone dress their won portion with whichever Marzetti dressing they choose.

    Reply

  59. I’ll use the Marzetti Simply Dressed Ranch to make toasted cheesy ranch tuna salad sandwiches. Delicious!

    Reply

  64. I will use Marzetti® Simply Dressed® refrigerated salad dressings to make a BLT salad for my family. we love BLT sandwich, so the salad version is rather a healthier version.

    amy [at] utry [dot] it

    Reply

  71. I’d love to make chicken caesar salad with Romaine, Tomato, carrots, radish, cooked chicken croutons and Marzetti Caesar dressing. Thanks so much.

    Reply

  80. oh – looks wonderful! Would also make a chopped salad, potato salad and tuna salad!
    tvollowitz at aol dot com

    Reply

  85. I would use the Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing for Strawberry Walnut green salad.
    Add bread sticks good to go!
    thank you

    ★★★★★

    Reply

  89. My favorite meal to make out of Marzetti dressing is a yummy Chef Salad! I love to use the Blue Cheese dressing with my left over meats, hard boiled eggs, crispy onion strings, beets and crumbled blue cheese as well. Such a great and yummy meal!

    ★★★★

    Reply

  94. I would start by following your recipe! YUM! I’d love some of this right now! And, of course, I’d use it for typical salads too 🙂

    Reply

  115. I would use it in a fresh veggie salad, with walnuts, potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots… yummy !

    Reply

  122. My boys love a fully dressed Chef Salad with Marzetti® Simply Dressed Ranch dressing!

    ★★★★

    Reply

  136. I’d use them as a light glaze on grilled shrimp or salmon, and then serve them over a nice green salad with more of the same dressing.

    ★★★★

    Reply

  138. I would make a mixed green salad with grilled chicken, almonds, dried cranberries or fresh strawberries, lots of fresh veggies and dress it with Pomegranate Salad Dressing. So good!

    Reply

  144. I would do a spinach salad with roasted carrots & brussels sprouts, cherries, candied pecans and blue cheese dressing. Oh and avocado- that’s a must have on any salad.

    Reply

  154. I would add it to a salad using romaine lettuce, tomatoes and shredded rotisserie chicken

    tbarrettno1 at gmail dot com

    Reply

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