Save Time! Save Money! Boost Nutrition! Part 1 - Salad for Dinner

Salad For Dinner

We all know that a fresh green salad is good for us. But how many of us want to walk in the door after a long day at work, pull out a bunch of salad ingredients and then clean, chop, mix and prepare a wonderful salad? Yuck. I'd rather sit down and eat a bag of chips, after which I am 1) feeling guilty, 2) not hungry anymore, and 3) suffering from carb-brain. A few days of this, and it's time to toss the now wilted salad ingredients. A few weeks of this, and we no longer even buy salad ingredients. We rationalize that we'll get our greens as the veggies on our sub sandwich, or the tasteless pale green calorie laden excuse for a salad that they serve at that not2Bnamed Italian restaurant chain.

Buy

Try again. Go ahead and buy salad ingredients. Buy the freshest, most colorful stuff you can find and will eat. Where possible, buy ingredients that have had some of the prep done for you - washed greens, sliced mushrooms, chopped celery, and chopped sweet peppers. The less work you have to do, the more likely it is you will have a homemade salad. A note of caution - I tend to not trust the prewash process, even though I do purchase 'washed' greens.

Store

At home, fill a large plastic lidded bowl with the greens (lettuce, spinach, arugula, whatever), the chopped celery, sweet peppers and select other ingredients. There is a certain amount of trial and error in choosing what can be combined and stored this way versus what should be kept separate until the last minute. I don't mix mushrooms, tomatoes or onions in until I am actually making the salad. The large plastic bowl is a mid-way step for storage in the days before you make the salad.

Make

Now let's repeat the first paragraph - with a healthy change: walk in the door after a long day at work, pull out all the salad ingredients that are already cleaned, chopped and partially mixed. Transfer the portions needed from the large storage bowl in the fridge to a mixing bowl. Add other ingredients as you wish (sometimes what's in the bowl will be all you need or want), add dressing, and serve.

No chips, no guilt, no carb-brain, no tossing rotted salad fixings into the garbage disposal, and no weird green liquids floating in the bottom of your vegetable crisper!

The Best Salad Dressing In The World

It's easy, healthy and homemade, and it can be made in bulk and kept in the fridge. Start with high quality first cold pressed virgin olive oil and unseasoned rice vinegar. Mix the olive oil and rice vinegar in a ratio of 3 parts olive oil to 1 part rice vinegar and add seasonings to suit yourself. Here is my favorite: Put the following ingredients into a small food processor such as the Sunbeam Oskar: 1/3 cup olive oil, 1/3 cup rice vinegar, 1 whole fresh garlic clove, ½ teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoon black pepper, 1 teaspoon chopped tarragon leaves, 1 single serving packet Splenda. Process. Pour the processed mix through a funnel into a bottle that has a cork. Add 2/3 cup olive oil to the mix. Cork and shake. Refrigerate until 1 hour prior to serving. Remove from the fridge and let the dressing come to room temperature. Shake well, and pour 2 tablespoons per serving over the salad. Mix and serve. Return unused dressing to the fridge for tomorrow's salad!