Winter Salad

A meatless main dish salad composed of roasted root vegetables like beets, carrots, and potatoes over tender bok choy, topped with a fried egg.

This vegetarian main dish salad is perfect for the season when your body wants Spring but the view outside the window hasn't quite caught up yet.

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About this time of year, as the days are getting noticeably longer and the time change means I've got more light available in the evenings, I start craving fresh food. I haven't used a winter Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share before, but my Strategic Winter Squash Reserve is proof that much of the Fall harvest can be enjoyed months later if properly stored.

I need more than just long-storing root vegetables, though. I crave leaves! When I am lucky to find a farmer growing winter greens I make good use of their produce. This Winter Salad is a tasty way to enjoy some mild cold weather greens like bok choy or spinach. I first got the idea for raw bok choy in a salad thanks to Alanna's lyrical descriptions of her Bok Choy Salad with Creamy Vinaigrette. Young tender small leaves are best for eating raw in salads. Use the more mature larger plants in Fish Tacos or Yakisoba.

Instant Pot Bacon Blue Cheese Mushroom Meatloaf for 2 (or more)

This one pot Instant Pot meal combines bacon, blue cheese, and mushrooms in a satisfying meatloaf cooked alongside sweet potatoes. If you like a bacon, blue cheese and mushroom burger, you'll like this meatloaf!

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This is not a sponsored post.

I feel like I should put that out there since you can see packaging materials in my photos. When I bought the first package of this ground beef with pork & bacon blend I thought it would be terrific in a meatloaf--and easy to make do if you cannot find the same product. After all, many grocery stores sell a "meatloaf mix" or "meatball mix" which has ground beef and ground pork. I've never seen one with bacon before, though, which is what caught my eye.

Simon is giving the food the side-eye. I think he knows he's not getting any.

When I read further on the packaging--small batch, local, got their start selling at farmer's markets, donate 1 meal for every package sold--well, I was sold. So I'm happy to share with you what brand of ground meat product I'm using--MightySparkFood--just know that I'm sharing because I like the product I purchased, not because the company is aware I exist and asked me to develop this recipe.

[Using my best How to Speak Minnesotan]
So, the recipe, then. When I developed my Turkey Meatloaf with Wild Rice recipe and Feta for my Instant Pot Basics cooking class, I did so because I'd wanted to use this product but I had a student who did not eat pork. [I've made that recipe 4 times in the past 2 months and apparently never bothered to grab a camera during the process. Stay tuned, the 5th time is the charm.]

Instant Pot Chicken and Wild Rice Soup

An Instant Pot version of the classic creamy chicken & wild rice soup. Laden with mushrooms, carrots & celery, this soup cooks from frozen chicken breasts in under an hour in an electric pressure cooker.

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Yes, it's been a while. I've been teaching a series of Instant Pot Basics cooking classes for the past two months. We make this recipe in Class 2:  Cooking from Frozen. My students have inspired me to create some new recipes for the Instant Pot that I'll be sharing here now that I'm in between classes for a bit, so stay tuned!


I love using my IP for soup. The ability to sauté the veggies, deglaze the pan, and then add the rest of the ingredients and walk away is heavenly! Because I'm sharing soups with my folks and my girlie as well, I've had days this winter when I've made 3 different soups in a single morning. My days are not All Soup All The Time, though. Mostly I've been spending my time shoveling since Minnesota decided to welcome me in a Big Way. We live on a corner, so after the first 5 or 6 snowfalls we really got the hang of shoveling this place. I even shoveled a racetrack in the backyard since there's so much snow. (You can see video of the dogs running their track on my FB and IG feeds.)