Barley and Root Vegetable Salad - April 5, 2011

Warm Barley and Root Veggie Salad with Spinach

This was a meal inspired by cleaning out our fridge and finding many unused root veggies from our CSA. Since our new share starts in about four weeks (yay!), I think it's high time we start using up last years goods. For this salad I roasted parsnips and turnips tossed in my new favorite oil, coconut. It's seriously so good. While those were roasting, I cooked up some hulled barley, which is more nutritious than pearled, but also takes about 20 minutes longer to cook, so plan accordingly. Once the barley was done, I mixed in some fresh spinach to allow the heat from the grains to wilt it a little and then I tossed in the roasted root veggies. We dressed it all with some olive oil, salt and fresh pepper.