Does your grocery/fruit and veg supplier not sell these vegetables in bunches?

I would guess that for 6 servings, you would need another bunch of the baby beets.

I haven't seen bunches of baby beets or baby carrots at my 2 small town grocery stores, so I'll have to use the smallest beets in a regular bunch (4, which I weighed at 8 oz) and the skinniest carrots, (7, in an organic bunch which weighed 12 oz). The 1 lb of asparagus will probably result in about 8 oz when the ends are broken off. I'm just not sure if the baby beets and carrots come in similar bunches weight-wise, so am unsure of the proportions.

I don't think it will matter too much. It is likely if you keep the proportions of the main veggies pretty equal, you'll be fine. So if you use 20 small slender carrots (which would be 2 per guest), then I'd use enough small beets cut in quarters maybe to mimic baby beet size, to equal 20 pieces. Same with asparagus...figure 2 or 3 pieces per guest. I wouldn't just add another bunch of beets without increasing the other ingredients. It looks like the pea pods and green beans are intended to be more auxiliary than stars, keep those less than the others, but more than 4 ounces since you're doubling the # of servings, so maybe double those to 8 oz. Then double the ricotta ingredients, too.

Glad to see you'll use real young carrots instead of those insipid "baby" carrots sold in cello bags.

Olychick, sheila, and colleen, thank you for taking the time to respond to my post.

I will try the recipe tomorrow Olychick, since you have given me such good specific information on the proportions--just what I was looking for. And I completely agree with you on the packaged "baby" carrots!

Sheilajoyce, I love beets so may add an extra one or two in!

Olychick's recommendations sound good to me. Just to answer the specific questions:

Baby beets come about five or six to the bunch, each about an inch in diameter.

Baby carrots come about six or seven to the bunch, and need to be cut to a similar size. They should be pencil to fat pencil around. Bigger and they're not baby, but you can substitute slightly larger carrots so long as they're still small and sweet (i.e., not horse carrots!).

Asparagus usually comes in the same sized bunch whether there are many fewer fat ones, or many more skinny ones. That makes about the same weight, but very different amount in your salad. The bunch is about 2.5"-3" in diameter. If you get very small ones you might want to use a bit less.

Really good advice here. I would only add that get more and you can add if it doesn’t look like enough. Some of our friends and family eat way more than we do so for me it’s always hard to tell.

Bland might be a simple need for more salt. Or pepper. The next most common culprit is lack of acid, so the extra lemon juice only helped. The trick if it's about the S&P is to adjust very slowly. The difference between bland and overseasoned can be very small.

It sounds like you're getting a good handle on things. Good luck with the party.

Sounds like a beautiful salad....and I would suggest a drizzle of balsamic to combat "blandness"....white balsamic to keep the fresh color.
And I agree....skip the ricotta and go for some chevre instead.

plllog and lindac92, thank you so much for the additional information, which I did not know and which will help me when preparing other future dishes. I am basically a novice due to many years of being too busy working and raising kids to think about cooking many different dishes, and am now enjoying a variety of food in my cooking group.

Anne

HU, thanks for the recipe, which looks yummy, but actually I am trying for a non-greens based substantial salad with some ricotta.

For our group's luncheons, we usually have a theme. Earlier this year when I was looking for a recipe online to use up some ricotta cheese, I found quite a variety of interesting ones and decided my theme would be "Gotta Lotta Ricotta" for our mid-October get-together. I have been trying the various recipes and have settled on the first three below, and am finalizing the salad decision. In the interest of having a tastier salad, I will cheat a little and substitute goat cheese for the ricotta in the recipe above, and let the members know that it originally had ricotta as the cheese. Also, one member can't have cow milk based cheese, so I'll substitute goat cheese in each of her dishes, and for anyone else who let's me know she doesn't like ricotta.

A more appealing title for the recipe below would be "Lasagna Cups with Chicken Sausage and Mango Chutney." Since these taste better as leftovers, I'll make the sauce the day before. With one serving ("cupcake") per person, and the other selections, the salad will need to be more substantial than usual, and the recipe in the original post is appealing because of the multiple vegetables.

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/aarti-sequeira/lasagna-cupcakes-with-sausage-and-mango-chutney-recipe-1925693

I made some changes to this one--will grill whole grain flatbread, and use regular almonds, since marconas are SO expensive (members have to contribute to the cost of the meal, which we try to keep within a certain range) and hard to find at times.

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/geoffrey-zakarian/snow-pea-and-ricotta-crostini-2482381

For dessert:

https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/roasted-peaches-with-ricotta-buttercream-and-breadcrumbs

I'm going to try this cookie recipe today. It's listed as "healthy", but I'd sure like to find one with lower fat. Don't know if I should substitute low fat ricotta here, since I don't know if lowering the amount of fat would change the taste/texture when baking to a not very great cookie.

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/lemon-ricotta-cookies-with-lemon-glaze-recipe-1950241

Anne