Ingredients
Romaine Lettuce
Spinach Leaves
Red Bell Pepper, diced
Celery, chopped
Purple Cabbage, chopped
Carrots, chopped
Cucumber, lightly peeled and sliced
Red onion, chopped
Cooked Quinoa
Black Olives
Grape Tomatoes
Black Beans
Hard Boiled Eggland’s Best Eggs
Salad shaker (not pictured) filled with various seeds, nuts: chia seeds, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, pine nuts, slivered almonds, pumkin seeds, etc.
Your favorite salad dressing
*The key to making this a “Power Salad” is in using plenty of different colored vegetables. Be creative, you can also include broccoli, cauliflower, sugar snap peas…or do one entirely with various berries and cheese crumbles 🙂
**You can add some sliced grilled chicken and you have a nice lunch or light dinner.
Directions:
If you don’t have any leftovers on hand, wash and cook quinoa, hard-boil Eggland’s Best eggs.
Chop, dice, slice the veggies placing them in small, individual storage containers. Wash and dry the lettuce and spinach, I use packaged spinach leaves to make my prep time a little shorter. It is important to dry the leaves so they will not wilt later when you store them for the next meal. I use a salad spinner, but blotting dry with paper towels will work as well. I like to use separate containers for each vegetable because moisture from cucumbers and other vegetables high in water content can wilt the spinach and lettuce and tend to spoil a little more quickly; containers make it is easy to toss them out and nothing else is ruined.
I have found that by spending a little time once a week preparing vegetables for my salad ingredients I benefit in several ways: everyone gets to make their salad to their own taste, the ingredients last longer in my refrigerator as moisture is contained, and I have ready-to use veggies for omelets, frittatas, and quesadillas
My husband and I do something like this. We chop up the salad topping and always have fresh chopped greens (we buy pre-chopped organic greens) and a homemade nut-based dressing on hand. We have a huge fresh salad for lunch every day (imagine the amount of greens shown in the photo in one salad) and another smaller one with dinner.
I do this also with salad, but I also cook all day on Sunday meals that can just be popped in the oven or reheated in the microwave, so less stressful when you don’t have the worry of what am I going to make when I get home, then you can concentrate on other things