Maple Balsamic Roasted Sweet Potato and Kale Salad with Spicy Pepitas

The Olympics are over and Canada has prevailed at our most hallowed of sports…hockey.  Apologies to those south of the border for our hockey genius, maybe you’ll win next time? Or not. I made this lovely salad to celebrate our 1-0 win over Team USA on Friday. I wanted something uber healthy to go with the huge tray of poutine I was also making…

    Fries, Cheese Curds, Poutine Sauce…a winning Canadian trilogy!

Alas, the best tasting foods are usually also not so good for you. Enter the sweet potato and kale salad. I peeled and diced the sweet potato into 2 cm pieces:

Then covered it in this:

Maple Syrup, Balsamic Vinegar, fresh ground pepper, Olive Oil

Then roasted it for half an hour at 400 F. For the kale, I quickly sauteed it with a bit of oil. I think you can just give it an oil massage if you want. It would keep the kale a much brighter colour than applying heat. For the pepitas, I mixed up a bit of lime juice and maple syrup with some spicy salt and roasted them in the oven until they were sticky. My intent was for them to give a bit of a spice kick but the spicy salt was not enough so next time I’ll add some ground chili as well. For a quick dressing I made up a bit more of the stuff in the jar and just poured it over top the finished salad.