The WHOLE Pursuit April 11

Inspiration for this title again from Erica at Between a Rock & a Hobby

I am planning on another weekly feature on my blog called 'The WHOLE Pusuit', it being a feature on whole foods and how easy and tasty they can be to prepare! Today will be...Brussels sprouts and beets! Doesn't that sound tasty?? For some of you, you are thinking probably not. And actually, my intention for whole food exploration was going to be artichokes, but the local grocery store did not have any. However, they did have some organic beets and Brussels sprouts. I have not had beets nearly as often as I'd like since discovering that I actually like them, and I've never had Brussels sprouts. This should prove to be an interesting experiment! I have a weird hang up about avoiding too many similarities in my meals, so I wanted to make sure the beets and Brussels sprouts were prepared differently enough. I decided to do a salad with the beets, however, the actual preparation of the beets was ridiculously simple.

Heat oven to 450, slice beets, drizzle with olive oil, season with salt & pepper, and bake! Baking time will be about 7-10 minutes depending on your desired level of tenderness. If you would like, beets can be served as is, nice and hot. I chose to let the beets cool before adding them into a salad. The salad wasn't anything fancy and took advantage of what I had on hand-spinach, cucumber, tomato, basil, dried dill, and rice vinegar (1 tablespoon). Adding the beets with the residual olive oil gave the perfect coating for the salad and was the perfect combination of flavors! For those that may not like beets, this is a way to try them while incorporating other flavors to hide the delicious earthiness of beets.

So the beets were easy. I got a chance to try something new while using all whole foods making this a healthy and delicious side. But now for the Brussels sprouts. I was a little nervous about trying out a food that has a reputation of being hated by all. But they are so cute, and the recipe I found seemed so easy...

Clean the Brussels sprouts, trim off the stems and cut in half length wise. Lightly coat each Brussels sprout half in olive oil while heating 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a saucepan. Place Brussels sprouts cut side down in a single layer in the heated pan, sprinkle with salt and pepper and cover. Heat until tender, about 5 minutes. When cooked through, remove cover, sprinkle with 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, turn up heat for a minute or two to brown and crisp the cut side of the sprouts. Do a quick toss of the pan to coat with the cheese and lightly brown the round side of the spout. And enjoy! I couldn't believe how delicious these were! Definite success in trying a new food, and another great recipe to try and incorporate more whole foods into our diet.

Mmmmmm!