SALAD'ING: How to eat your salad better?

D​o you find it hard to eat salad? Does it feel like it fails to meet your hunger? Actually the right ingredients and how we put it all together makes it a sumptuous meal.

I find most salad contents with sauce or vinaigrette with sugar content and even a lot of ingredients which have sugar. Unconsciously we are so used to thinking sugar makes anything easy to drink or eat. It took me a while to get off on a lot of sugar. A long process and not easy. Until our subconscious reminds us when you see a tempting dessert 'oh that's not for you'. Even now I do make some choices when I am craving something sweet though I am now able to set limits.

Quinoa salad with arugula, lettuce, olives, sauerkraut and sautéed asparagus

Returning to the salads the right ingredients make it right. I try to add a lot of greens (different varieties to name a lettuce greens, microgreens, arugula and more), often choose avocado, a good protein ingredient (such as eggs, salmon, lightly boiled chicken, quinoa, lentils) of a sizable amount. Pickles without a lot of sodium not out of the bottles if possible. A better source is a probiotic like sauerkraut gives the crunch and sourness. Olives without preservatives. And vegetables of course such as sauteed peppers deseeded and skinned, tomatoes thinly slice lightly sauteed, broccoli cut fine and if you are a fan of mushrooms can lightly sauteed it too.

Salmon, arugula, microgreens, tomatoes, on a quinoa tofu base laid on gluten free whole grain bread

My usual dressing is olive oil and if I don't have any sour content I add a bit of lemon juice. I like to mix the salad well because unless we do that the juices from the different ingredients don't mix. Like Avocado has a natural tendency to release its oils which tends to mix the ingredients well. Minimal salt if some ingredients already have salt.

April, 2023