Salad-a-Day May!

I know I said I’d post a round-up of the salads I ate this month once I had completed my challenge, but I’m doing a lot of repetition and didn’t want to post that many photos of salads, so I figured I may as well just do a quick round-up of the types of salads I’ve been eating so far.

To remind you, I had decided to challenge myself to eat a salad a day in May. The benefits of this challenge?

• Not having to think about what to have for lunch every day (a few days I had salad with dinner, but most of the time it was a quick and filling lunch)
• Experimenting with new dressings, salad combos and flavours
• Not worrying about whether or not I’m having enough veggies. Even if I didn’t have a single other veggie besides the salad each day, I was still getting a ton in thanks to the size of these salad beasts!
• I had more energy than usual, for sure, and I craved things like fresh fruit for ‘dessert’ rather than chocolate or other sweet treats

The cons:

• It sometimes got repetitive because I had to use up the ingredients I had (salad ingredients go off quickly!)
• Having to shop more often because salad ingredients are best fresh

Overall though, I think it’s a great challenge and encourage everyone to do it. Now I realize that having a salad as part of my daily eats really fills me up, keeps me feeling energized and is a great way to get a good dose of those daily fruit and veg!

So here’s some of the combos I had going on:

In the mix:

• 2 cups of mixed greens and herbs organic lettuce mix
• grape tomatoes
• cucumber slices
• raw mushrooms
• roasted broccoli, cauliflower and carrots
• some caramelized tofu strips that I make from Kate’s recipe, and that I am completely addicted to (I made a whole block and had about 4-5 strips each day on my salad. The tofu lasted the whole week in the fridge without any worries)

In the mix:

• Same as above except I swapped the tofu strips for falafel balls, crumbled up

I halved the regular salad size and just kept it to raw veggies, as this was a dinner side salad with some butternut squash quesadillas.

Sorry for the poor phone picture, but this was one of my favourites!

In the mix:

• Mixed greens
• Sliced cucumber
• Grape tomatoes
• Raw mushrooms
• Crumbled veggie burger (amazing veggie burgers made using this recipe)
• Peanuts

Another side salad for dinner – the regular veggie salad topped with sliced strawberries, served with a slice of veggie pizza.

Keeping in with the strawberry theme, this has:

• mixed greens
• heirloom tomatoes
• cucumber slices
• mushroom slices
• caramelized tofu strips
• sliced strawberries
• goat cheese, crumbled and sprinkled over

Portable lunch salad – the usual mix with heirloom tomatoes and tofu strips.

Side salad served with poached egg on toast, sprinkled with nutritional yeast.

Salad topped with the usual veggies and tofu strips but also with thinly sliced potato, roasted in the oven.

Other salads?

• Last weekend I went to a cabin on Mayne Island in a group of 10, so the food was just a giant Costco shop for all of us. There wasn’t really a way for me to make a salad every day, but we had bought a huge tray of quinoa salad from Costco with tomatoes, cucumber, herbs and more in, so I had that each day and called that my salad 😉 (If it counts, though I don’t think it does, we also had chickpea ‘salad’ and potato ‘salad’!)
• I made grilled portobello mushrooms for dinner one night and used the leftovers for a great salad topper
• Throwing in other fruit too, like chopped apple or orange slices or grapes, is a great way to mix it up

Dressings?

I stuck with two. I have a favourite salad dressing I make myself but I just didn’t have time, so I went with store-bought dressings:

• KRAFT Signature Balsamic Dressing
• Trader Joe’s Hummus Dressing

Both are so good, and satisfy different requirements – one is a light vinaigrette and the other a richer, creamier Ranch-style dressing (but it’s vegan!)

As you can see I was fairly repetitive because I had to use up the produce I had in the fridge so I couldn’t change it up every day. Instead, I changed up the salad toppers and threw different items on there to up the protein count of the salad. I’m still doing the challenge – May isn’t over yet! – but I am also pretty sure I will continue to have salads much more regularly than I have in the past after this!

QUESTION:

• What are your favourite salad mixes?