Preparing Lunch Salads for the Work Week

Salads are always a healthy lunch idea. A convenient way to prepare your lunch salads is to make them ahead of time, at the beginning of the week.

First, decide what you want to put in your salads. Choose healthy veggies to throw in, like romaine lettuce, spinach leaves, baby carrots, broccoli florets, cauliflower, cucumber slices, tomato, sliced mushrooms, radishes, cabbage, olives, bell pepper and onion. Green leafy veggies are usually very healthy and good for you. Stay away from iceberg lettuce, which has close to no nutrient value to you. When deciding what to put in your salad, try to pick as many healthy foods as possible; and less fattening foods like bacon bits. It's also cheaper to buy your veggies separate, and make a larger salad, than to buy the bagged salad mixes. However, you can buy bagged romaine lettuce, or bagged spinach, which makes life a lot easier when it comes to making a salad.

Next, wash and dry all of your salad ingredients thoroughly, with cold water. I never trust grocery stores to do it right, so I like to wash the vegetables myself when I get home from the store. Now you'll need a large bowl, and 5 smaller bowl-shaped containers. You can find them in the dollar store, or Glad and Ziploc containers are great to use too. Try to find a container that will hold about 4 to 5 cups. Even if you don't fill the containers to the top, you'll have extra room in there so that salad isn't overflowing. Set out your smaller containers, with the lids off.

In the large bowl, tear up your lettuce pieces. Or, if you bought the bagged romaine lettuce, put the entire bag into the large bowl. Next, add your other salad vegetables. If they are already cut or sliced, throw them in the bowl. For some of the veggies, like a cucumber or green pepper, you may need to cut them first.

Once all of your ingredients are in the bowl, put the lid on and shake, so that all of the ingredients are incorporated throughout the entire salad. Open the lid, and put some of the salad into each of the smaller containers. If desired, you can top with salads with low fat shredded cheese, but only a little bit. Mozzarella and feta are my favorite types of cheese for my salads.

Put the lids on all of your containers, and store them in the fridge. If you want dressing with your salads, pour a little into small containers (which can also be found at the dollar store), and store those in the fridge as well. Make sure you are using low fat or fat free dressings. If you want to turn your simple salad into a dinner entree salad, you could add chicken strips or steak strips to it.

Now you'll have a healthy salad for every day of the week. Whether you want to have one for lunch or dinner, it is already prepared for you and you don't have to do any work during the week.