This time of year I like to prepare my body for the onslaught of holiday foods it’s about to ingest. In my mind, the only way to combat Halloween candy, pumpkin-spiced cronuts, Christmas cookies, and egg nog is with a good solid base of super foods. So, throughout the early fall I up my intake of dark leafy greens, so come my holiday caloric binge I can look back and think, “I ate healthy in September.” Ha!

So, I give you a staple in my house this time of year, The Fall Kale Salad.

To make this salad, you’ll need the following ingredients:

• 4 bunch of kale (Cook’s choice on which variety to use. I normally default to curly kale.)
• 3 medium sized sugar beets
• 1/3 cup slivered almonds
• 1/4 cup of Cheve goat cheese crumbled
• 2 tsp. of sesame seed oil
• 1 Tbl olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

This recipe will make about 4 full size salads and should take about 1 hour of inactive time about about 30 minutes of active time.

Set your oven to 400°F. Trim the greens from the beets and wash them thoroughly.

Fork pierce the beets and coat them with the olive oil. Wrap the beets in a aluminum foil pouch and roast them for approximately 40 minutes. The beets should be fork tender when removed from the oven. After removing the beet from the oven, allow them to rest in their pouch until cool enough to handle. Once cool the the skin of the beet should easily peel away. Beets will stain your hands pink, so wear gloves if you so desire. After the skin is removed, dice the beets bite-size.

While the beets are roasting you can prepare the kale. Bring large pot of water to boil. Rinse and de-stem the kale. I like to run my hand alongside of the kale’s “spine” from root to tip in one swift motion to remove the leaf from the stem.

Kale is a hearty enough green that this treatment doesn’t bruise the leaf too much and it make the job much quicker. Once you removed the stems, cut your leaves into bite-size ribbons. Blanche the kale ribbons in the boiling water. Letting the kale cook in the boiling water for just 1 minute before draining the pot into a colander and rising the kale with cold water until it’s cool to the touch.

Salad spin the blanched kale to remove any excess water. Add the beets, almonds, and goat cheese crumbles to the kale and toss. Dress with sesame seed oil and salt and pepper to your taste. Roasted beets will keep up to a week in the fridge. If you wanted to roast your beets ahead of time, you could cut down on the preparation time for this salad.