Then I discovered those bags of leaves in the supermarket? Sure they're a little more expensive, sometimes. But the food actually gets used rather than thrown out because I can't be bothered making a salad or don't like the lettuce. And while shopping yesterday, I noticed the bag I bought (baby spinach leaves) was half the price of a regular iceberg lettuce. well that had me sold.
The problem comes with adding things to the leaves. I'm great at chucking a couple of leaves on my ham and cheese sandwich, but anything more advanced? Nup. But yesterday I grabbed a punnet of grape tomatoes (incidentally also half the price of cherry tomatoes) and a cucumber.
Of course, when it came to making a salad that night, those were the only appropriate vegetables I had that didn't require much preparation (I told you I was lazy). Hubby looked skeptical when I said we were having salad with our pork. In a fit of inspiration (and constant nearly 3 year old whinging) I chucked a handful of grapes in. And when I was finished I thought it looked so good I had to take a picture.
.JPG)
Doesn't that look yummy? Yeah I thought so. I then excelled myself and served up rockmelon, watermelon and grapes for dessert. I was feeling rather healthy last night.
Looks great kin! And I imagine there was a lot more nutrition in those spinach leaves than in an iceberg lettuce too. I like my salads to have lots of colour.
Fruit makes a great part of a salad. We often have cut up apple pieces as part of our salad or grated apple mixed into the coleslaw (as then the kids will eat it).
We're usually pretty "boring" salad eaters. Only having what can be made right before the meal - I'm not all that great with anything that has to be preprepared (like cooking potatoes or noodles etc).
November 13, 2007 at 8:29 AM
I forgot to say - LOVE the salad bowl!!!! Those bowls are my favourites at the moment! :-)
November 13, 2007 at 8:31 AM
I agree about colour! I remember I used to do the Supermarket Safari's with the kids when I worked at Woolies, and we used to push the different coloured veggies on them pretty hard.
I'm normally not game enough to put fruit in a salad, but it worked quite well so I'll probably get a bit braver now.
Hubby makes a great potato salad, which is his specialty, and my mother-in-law a great noodle salad, so we do get a lot of variety still.
And I love the salad bowl too. I even have one in red. Now if I could only get my hands on a purple one...
November 13, 2007 at 9:24 AM
I know what you mean about the bags. I have started getting them too! I hate waste and it makes it soooo easy.
November 13, 2007 at 3:48 PM
Looks great!
I like the mixed leaf salad bags! they make having salad so much easier and more likely to happen in my house!
We nearly always put orange slices in our salads and quite often pineapple pieces too. I'm not big on dressings, but will use lemon juice instead.
November 13, 2007 at 9:57 PM
Looks good! I love salads too. I hope everyone remembers to wash the bag salad as we saw with the E-Coli outbreak.
Debbie aka The Real World Martha
November 14, 2007 at 6:22 AM
colourful salads look great!!
I love carrot in our salad butinstead of slicing or grating it we use the peeler and put peelings of it in our salads. That's a lot quicker than slicing/chopping :)
November 14, 2007 at 6:53 AM
Joh, they are easy aren't they?
Precious, I just can't come at orange in a salad (my mother-in-law does it all the time though). Plus I don't buy oranges, so it's kind of hard - hehe.
Hi Debbie! Very good point about washing the leaves. I'm extra careful at the moment because I'm pregnant, but we should wash everything we get at the shop before we use it!
Ali, that's what I do too with carrot (shh! don't tell anyone). Unfortunately carrot was a bit sick yesterday, so it got thrown out. Sigh. I also use a Julianne peeler now, which is just like using a peeler but gives beautiful almost grated veggies. Must remember to get some carrot today.
November 14, 2007 at 6:59 AM
Hi Kin, a handful of sultanas thrown in a salad is yummy too.
November 14, 2007 at 1:33 PM
I often toss my rockmelon into my dinner salad, along with small cubes of cheese. I get dinner and dessert in one go. If I have fresh pineapple in the house that goes in too. (The canned stuff is too soggy.)Those packs of tri-colour capsicum make a colourful note in salads too. Or just get a yellow capsicum and one that is part green/part red.
November 14, 2007 at 4:23 PM
MMM i love salads too, however wont buy those bags after finding out that the woolies and coles bags have chlorine sprayed onto the leaves to help retain colour or freshness. Bad enough that our water is overchlorinated without adding it directly to the food.
My kids like salads too thankfully and like vinagrette dressing (well dd cant have egg so hers is just applecider vinegar, pepper and olive oil).
They love apple in their salads, and it goes really well with capsicums (any colour, whichever is cheapest this week), cucumber they eat like lollies (fresh cucumber only, not tinned stuff), carrots (well they eat those whole as snacks, we go through several kilos each week, its a wonder i dont have oompaloompa's instead of kids), tomatoes (we grow our own, so could be grape, tom thumb, cherry or roma depending on which one is fruiting), leaves of any kind that have colour, although the rocket we have seems to be EXTRA HOT so havent had much of that in a while, lol at least it has pretty flowers.
Oh and Nasturtium flowers are nice in a salad if you like peppery flavour, little kids might find them too spicy, but might try to eat it just for the novelty factor of having flowers they can eat.
Oooh and I also love the bowl, i have some older version of that i think, as yours looks greenish whereas mine is blue (havent been a tw dealer for a few years now lol).
November 18, 2007 at 5:04 AM