Carrot and Sweet Potato Salad

For a quick, warm salad, try carrot and sweet potato salad. This recipe is from "Best Ever Indian Cookbook," which I've also talked about here.

The dish calls for a can of chickpeas, but I used pintos because I had them on hand. I also left out the fresh cut tomatoes, which would also be awesome.

This is really quick and simple. Cook the sweet potatoes and carrots until soft, but still crisp. Then you mix them with the beans/peas and tomatoes and garnish with walnuts, raisins and/or onions. You can also pour the mixture over salad for a decorative effect, but I decided that would be a waste of salad.

I preferred the dish with warmed beans, too, and then topping it with raisins. I'm not sure if I'd warm the cut tomatoes or use them as a cool garnish. I'm certainly willing to try this again, so I'll have plenty of chances to try this out in the future.

The dressing is yogurt, a bit of honey and pepper.

I served this with spicy meatloaf, also from the "Best Ever Indian Cookbook." I didn't really like the meatloaf at first, but it grew on me. I used turkey instead of beef and I think the tumeric would complement beef much better than turkey.

The meatloaf is baked with eggs on the top and bottom, so it's like an egg-covered meatloaf, which was quite interesting.