Roasted Sweet Potato Salad with Pomegranate Pumpkin Dressing

Yesterday during our afternoon off from work, Tim and I got crafty in the kitchen. We received giant sweet potatoes in our CSA last week, and we also had a ton of pomegranate seeds left over from last week’s food prep, so we wanted to make a lunch for the week that used both. Here’s what we came up with!

Roasted Sweet Potato Salad with Pomegranate Pumpkin Dressing

Serves 4-5 as a main meal or 6-8 as a side dish

Ingredients

For the salad:

• 6 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into one inch cubes
• Half a small red onion, chopped
• 1 bell pepper, diced (or a quart container of mini peppers)
• 1/3 cup pumpkin seeds
• 1/3 cup pomegranate seeds
• 1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

For the dressing:

• 6 tbsp pomegranate juice
• 4 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 2 tbsp pumpkin seed oil
• 2 tbsp maple syrup
• Salt and ground pepper, to taste

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. In a bowl, toss the cut up sweet potatoes in 1 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil. Season with salt and pepper, then transfer to two large baking sheets. Roast in the oven for around 30 minutes, or until sweet potatoes are tender. Make sure to check on them halfway through and flip so the sweet potato cooks evenly.
3. While the sweet potatoes are cooking, make your dressing. In a medium size bowl, whisk together the pomegranate juice, red wine vinegar, pumpkin seed oil, maple syrup, and salt and pepper.
4. When the sweet potatoes are done, transfer to a large bowl, and add the onion, pepper, pumpkin seeds, pomegranate seeds, and cilantro.
5. Pour the dressing mixture over the salad and mix well. Make sure to pour slowly and taste as you go to avoid over-dressing. I recommend pour and tasting about 2-3 different times.
6. Top with the remaining 1/4 cup pomegranate seeds, and enjoy!

You might be thinking that pomegranate and pumpkin aren’t flavors that go well together, but when you take one awesome flavor and combine it with another awesome flavor… yeah. Double awesomeness. Using pumpkin seed oil in the dressing provides a nice contrast against the sweetness of the sweet potatoes, pomegranate seeds, and pomegranate juice. The diced peppers, pomegranate seeds, and pumpkin seeds add a nice crunch, and of course, I like anything with cilantro in it. For those of you who don’t like cilantro, you could sub in parsley, and for those of you who might not have pumpkin seed oil at home, feel free to use olive oil instead (may have to add a little more).

I love how colorful and nutritious this dish is, and I can’t wait to have it for lunches this week! If you make this, snap some pretty pictures and post to social media. Would love to see your versions!

Readers, let’s chat! What’s your favorite flavor? A-sweet potato, B-pomegranate, or C-pumpkin?!

Luckily, this dish doesn’t make you decide. 😉

Free LÄRABAR® Giveaway

I’m going to share a couple of things you’ll probably glaze over since the title of this post includes the words “free” and “giveaway.”

1.  Pomegranates.  New discovery.  How the HECK have I gone all these years without them?  I love Chobani’s pomegranate yogurt, and I love pom juice, and of course Michelob Ultra Pom Ras, but somehow after all this time I realized that I’ve never really bought the real fruit.  And oh my God, they are amazing!  A little messy to cut, but amazing nonetheless.  Pomegranate seeds in plain or vanilla Greek yogurt = new favorite snack.  Tastes like dessert.  Yum.

2.  My “telephone” workout playlist.  I don’t think I ever shared it.

I’m calling it my “Call Me Maybe” playlist, but I can’t take credit for the idea.  At Boston Mania, all the fitness music companies had headphones out where you could listen to the tracks on the CD’s on iPhones before purchasing.  In true Athena fashion, I didn’t want to buy the CD, so I just snapped pictures of the theme playlists with my super smart phone so I could remember them.  Then I came home and just downloaded all the songs I didn’t have to recreate the playlist.

I actually recommend that you take out “Operator” by Midnight Star because it is an insanely long and WEIRD song, and instead replace it with Backstreet Boys “The Call” or Christina Milian’s “Call Me Beep Me If You Wanna Reach Me.”  Don’t judge.

3.  Humor:

My funny co-workers at the Y found this insanely old group ex instructor manual yesterday and decided it would be funny to paste my head on there and leave it in my mailbox.  Sad part?  I think I probably own, or once owned, that same outfit.  Again I say, don’t judge.

Okay, now for the good stuff!

LÄRABAR® Giveaway

About a month ago, the folks over at Larabar sent me four of their yummy little bars to try.  This company believes that “the foundation of a sound mind, body and spirit is derived from what you eat,” and their bars are a blend of unsweetened fruits, nuts, and spices.  Made from whole food, each flavor has no more than nine ingredients.

Larabar sent me their Peanut Butter Cookie, Apple Pie, and Banana Bread flavors to try.  I brought all three along as snacks to eat between workshops at Boston Mania, and while I thought they seemed kind of small at first, they did keep me full and helped hold me over between meals.

My favorite was Peanut Butter Cookie, obviously!  This bar has 7 grams of protein and only has three ingredients (peanuts, dates and salt) in it.  Apple Pie was good too, especially for a bar that’s under 200 calories.  This one provides 1 full serving of fruit and 5 grams of fiber.  I liked that it wasn’t TOO sweet, but I still got a nice chewy taste of cinnamon with it.  I don’t think I loved Banana Bread that much, but I think my expectations were pretty high because I bake homemade banana bread all the time.  It had a weird after taste?

Larabar also sent me the Apple Turnover flavor of their new line of über bars.

These have a different texture from the original larabars and are branded as more of a sweet and salty product.  They are still made from whole fruit and nuts.  This one didn’t disappoint, and now I want to try the other über flavors, especially roasted nut roll!

All that being said, I’m excited to give one lucky F&F reader a box of sixteen Larabars!  All you have to do is leave a comment on this post telling me what your favorite Larabar flavor is, or if you have yet to try a Larabar, what flavor you would want to try most.  You can check out all the flavors here.

Of course, you can also get an extra entry in the giveaway by liking BOTH Fitness & Feta and Larabar on Facebook, following BOTH Fitness & Feta and Larabar on Twitter, or sharing about this giveaway on any form of social media.  Make sure to leave a separate comment for each of those extra options in order for it to count.

Contest closes at 11:59pm on Thursday night (12/6), and I’ll announce the winner on Friday morning (12/7).

Good luck!