Bean Salad with Beets and Feta

I like to vary the beans in my weekly bean salads. While they all taste pretty much the same, it's nice to have the different colors and shapes in my lunch bag.

This week I cooked up some Tongue of Fire beans. These are a speckled roundish heirloom bean that Finley Farms grew last year. Sadly, this week I emptied my jar. With luck they'll grow them again this year, because they really are a most appealing shape. (There are a few pictures of them in the bean slideshow in the column to the right. They are the pinkish beans with reddish patterns on them.)

I combined them with some leftover marinated beets I had in the fridge. I had roasted and peeled the beets, then tossed them in the juice of a fresh orange, a little olive oil, salt and pepper. They were a fun side dish with dinner, and the next day they made a pretty addition to my lunch salad. A little feta sprinkled on top turned it into a feast. (It looks like a lot of feta in the picture, but it's less than a tablespoon on top of a cup of beans and beets.)

At lunch, I spooned the bean salad over a container of green salad, tossed it together, and ate a colorful pink-tinged meal - very cheerful on these grey cloudy days.