Sweet Potato and Legume Salad

Im on a bit of a salad kick at the moment - Every dinner this week has been salad. I think they make great dinners as they are easy, light and satisfying without being too heavy.

This one has a lovely interplay of colours and textures, as well as lots of filling legume protein!

1 small sweet potato, diced 1cm cubes
350gms sugar snap peas, cut in half
1/2 red onion, sliced finely
1 punnet mini romas, halved
1 tin champignons, drained and cut in half
1/2 large avocado, diced thick
1 tin lentils
1 tin 5 bean mix
3 tsp chopped garlic
2 tsp seeded mustard
a dash of lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste
macadamia nut oil to drizzle

Boil diced sweet potato until tender. Pour lentils and Bean mix into strainer, pour on the pot contents of the sweet potato. Rinse it all with cold water till sweet potato is cold.

Put everything into a big salad bowl. Add salt, pepper and lemon juice, toss till well mixed. Drizzle with Macadamia nut oil. 

Serves 4 as a meal, or 6 as a side salad.

Gnocchi with Pesto and Spinach

It was my last day of practicals for the year... Well... For my entire undergraduate actually! 

I had a hankering for some gnocchi ever since I saw someone, somewhere at some point in time in the last week made some in a delicious looking soupy tomato based sauce. It was probably on a blog - You know, the ones I read when I've got a study break (i.e. procrastinating...*sigh*)

I didnt feel like the heavy tomato based sauce today, as we had pasta a few days ago, but I did want something that would go down pretty well with a glass of red. Enter Pesto - stage left!

All the pesto at the shops looked crap, so I bought two bunches of Basil and made my own. 

Gnocchi with Pesto and Spinach 

1 pack of potato gnocchi

4 tbs pesto

1/2 bunch spinach, roughly chopped

a few egg tomatoes, halved

Shaved parmesan

Olive oil for drizzling

Salt and pepper to taste

To make the pesto: wash and roughly pick leaves from 2 bunches of basil. Use a hand mixer or food processor to chop finely. Add fresh garlic cloves to taste (I used about 4) add a bit of salt and pepper and olive oil. Store in a clean jar with a thin layer of olive oil.  

Cook gnocchi as per packet instructions. 

Toss through pesto, sprinkle spinach add tomatoes to taste. Add shaved parmesan. Liberally sprinkle with olive oil and add salt and pepper to taste.