B and I took a weekend getaway to one of our favorite places…Vero Beach! It was a wonderful weekend. Lots of good food, books, and beach time! I’ll keep the details to a minimum and get to the reason we’re all here…the food! I was reading a beautiful book called Blessings by Anna Quindlen, we had great sunny weather, and saw sea turtles in the water!

But the food…{swoon.} We went to Southern Social twice, and that’s saying something in a place that has as many good options as Vero Beach. The first night, B had a burger and loaded fries (he adored both) and I had short rib poutine loaded fries topped with a fried egg. I would have been very tempted to order that again, but it was such a big portion I only ate half of it, and I HATE wasting food.

So the second time we went, I made a lighter choice, as evidenced by this blog’s title. You might be thinking, “uh…beet salad? Let’s talk about the short rib poutine loaded fries instead…” You have to believe me…this salad was incredible. Flavorful and filling, I knew I wanted to make it at home. Let’s say for some crazy reason you don’t like roasted beets… (and it doesn’t count if you’ve never tried them!) you could take them off and this salad would STILL be amazing!

I’m going to walk you through assembling this salad, as opposed to actually giving you a recipe, because the components are simple and versatile. This is what I did: Start with whatever kind of salad greens you like. Spring mix is almost always my favorite for the variety in flavors and colors, but mostly anything would work here. The dressing tasted to me like a lemon vinaigrette, and I really wanted to recreate it using lemon curd, but B is having a sensitivity to eggs, so I used a basic vinaigrette this time. Dress the greens lightly and place each portion on the top half of the plate. (I used about 2 cups of greens for each portion.) Place roasted beets (alternating colors if you want to be fancy!) and pickled onions on top of greens. Swipe beet puree along bottom curve of plate and place a ball of mozzarella towards center of plate. *there’s a chance the salad at Southern Social had burrata instead of mozzarella. I couldn’t find burrata and I love fresh mozzarella, so that’s what I used. Season the cheese, toast your bread, and enjoy! I especially loved dipping the bread in the beet puree. Let me know what you think if you try it!!