Colorful Beet Salad with Carrot, Quinoa & Spinach -- The Clean Reset My January Needed

January in Portland is the gray month — the deepest, heaviest gray, the sky a flat ceiling of cloud that does not break for weeks. People get seasonal affective disorder here the way people in Phoenix get sunburns: inevitably, predictably, and with a certain resigned acceptance. I have my SAD lamp on the kitchen counter. I sit in front of it while I drink my morning miso soup, absorbing artificial sunlight and natural dashi simultaneously. This is my January wellness routine and it is exactly as glamorous as it sounds.

I made kenchinjiru this week — a clear vegetable soup from the Buddhist temple tradition, vegan, clean, the perfect antidote to the holiday excess. Root vegetables — daikon, carrot, burdock, taro — cut into careful pieces and simmered in kombu dashi with tofu and a little soy sauce. No meat, no fish, just vegetables and water and patience. It is the cleanest soup I know. It tastes like starting over, like January itself — stripped down, essential, nothing extra.

I have been thinking about the blog and what it could become. I have eight hundred readers now, which still feels small but is growing. More importantly, the writing is getting better. I can feel it — the sentences are tighter, the observations sharper, the connection between food and feeling more fluid. I am not just writing recipes anymore. I am writing essays that happen to contain recipes. The food is the vehicle. The feeling is the destination. I want to write more. I want to write bigger. I do not know what that means yet, but the wanting is there, and wanting is the first step toward everything.

Miya took her first steps this week. Two steps, then a fall, then a look of absolute outrage at the floor for having the audacity to be where she landed. She is nine and a half months old, which is early for walking, and I am choosing to attribute this to Nakamura determination rather than Callahan recklessness, though both are plausible. She stood up, took two steps toward the cat, fell, and the cat walked away, and Miya sat on the floor and said something that sounded remarkably like a Japanese expletive she must have heard from me during a particularly ambitious attempt at tamagoyaki. I deny everything.

Brian watched the whole thing on his phone. He got it on video. He texted it to his parents, his brother, his college friends. Two steps, broadcast to fifty people in two minutes. My daughter's first steps live on twelve different screens now. This is modern parenthood: the milestone as content, the private moment made public before the private moment is even over. I both love and hate this. I want to keep things. Brian wants to share them. The tension is the marriage.

The kenchinjiru had done its work—stripped everything back, made room—and I found myself wanting more of that energy, that clean vegetable honesty, but in a form I could bring to the table on a Tuesday without turning on the stove. This salad is what came next: beets and carrot, the same root sweetness as the soup but raw and bright, piled over quinoa and spinach with a simple dressing that gets out of the way. In a gray month when the sky offers nothing, you learn to make your own color.

Colorful Beet Salad with Carrot, Quinoa & Spinach

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 15 min | Total Time: 35 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 1 cup dry quinoa, rinsed
• 2 cups water or vegetable broth
• 3 medium beets, peeled and thinly sliced or julienned (about 2 cups)
• 2 medium carrots, peeled and julienned or grated
• 3 cups fresh baby spinach
• 1/4 cup pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds
• 2 tablespoons fresh parsley or cilantro, roughly chopped
• Dressing:
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 1 teaspoon maple syrup or agave
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Instructions

1. Cook the quinoa. Combine rinsed quinoa and water (or broth) in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 12–15 minutes until liquid is absorbed. Remove from heat, fluff with a fork, and let cool for 10 minutes.
2. Prep the vegetables. Peel and julienne or grate the beets and carrots. Keep them separate—beets will bleed their color onto everything they touch, which is either beautiful or a problem depending on your aesthetic preferences.
3. Make the dressing. Whisk together olive oil, apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, maple syrup, salt, and pepper in a small bowl until emulsified. Taste and adjust seasoning.
4. Assemble the salad. Spread spinach across a large serving platter or divide among bowls. Top with cooled quinoa, then arrange beets and carrots in sections over the top.
5. Finish and serve. Drizzle dressing evenly over the salad. Scatter seeds and fresh herbs over the top. Serve immediately, or refrigerate the components separately and assemble just before eating.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 310 | Protein: 10g | Fat: 13g | Carbs: 40g | Fiber: 6g | Sodium: 230mg