How To Enjoy Salad

[flume]

Everyone knows salads are healthy but they’re quite frowned upon because they’re usually boring and unsatisfying. So as a salad lover, I gathered some tips on how to make them more enjoyable :-)

1. Start small
   Vegetables are a lot higher in volume per calorie so you’ll have difficulty stomaching a big bowl of greens for lunch right away. Set an intention to eat one small bowl as a side dish everyday for lunch or dinner.
    
2. Start with no greens and use a lot of dressing
   Let’s be honest, the big, tasteless leaves of salad seem super boring and usually prevents us from making one in the first place. So start enjoying your salads without them. If there are raw vegetables in a bowl, it’s a salad in my books ;-) Just eat things you enjoy. Once you’re in the habit of having a bowl of veggies everyday, you can gradually add some greens: arugula, butter lettuce, spinach, etc. Chop them very small in the beginning and you won’t even notice they’re in there.
    
3. The most important part of every good salad: The dressing
   You’ll wanna stay away from store bought dressings and make your own instead. It’s actually fun and a lot more versatile once you get the basics down. 
   Here are two of my favourite dressings:
   
   1 Tbsp of tahini 
   1 Tsp of honey
   1 Tbsp of mustard 
   3 Tbsp of balsamic vinegar
   
   3 Tbsp of lemon juice
   Some apple cider vinegar
   1 Tbsp of nutritional yeast
   1 Tbsp of olive oil
   Garlic powder
   Dried dill

 

The base of your salad will be mostly raw veggies: Tomatoes, cucumber, bell peppers, carrot, beet, zucchini, corn, cabbage, radishes and greens. But the key element to making salad filling and satisfying is having a good balance of carbs, protein and fat in them. This becomes especially important if you want to have your salad as a meal, not just as a side dish. If you just eat veggies and a bit of dressing, you’ll probably be hungry again in an hour.

Good sources of carbohydrates would be potatoes and sweet potatoes, quinoa, buckwheat, millet, squashes, whole grain pasta, brown or wild rice. Alternatively you could eat some whole-grain bread on the side.

For protein I’d recommend chickpeas, kidney beans, butter beans and other kinds of beans, lentils, tofu, eggs, feta or fish (depending on your diet).

Some great sources of fat are avocados, olives, all kinds of nuts (walnuts, cashews, etc.) and seeds (pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, etc.).

 

Some extras if you wanna go fancy:

• Dried or fresh fruit like apples, figs and raisins.
• For winter: Roast up your favourite root vegetables in the oven with some olive oil and put them on your salad while they’re still warm. I sometimes to that with chickpeas too.
• Sprouts are full of nutrition and give your salad a good crunch.
• Some pickled cabbage or sauerkraut gives and interesting flavour and is good for digestion.
• Use all your favourite herbs (I love fresh basil and dill). They’re (again) full of nutrients and pretty easy to grow yourself.

 

Just be creative. There are no rules, really :-)

It's easy to forget the basics in all the self actualisation and spiritual work we're doing here :-) Eating healthy will assist you greatly in finding focus to pursue what’s important to you in life.

[Michael569]

Lovely 

Thanks for sharing, awesome tips especially around dressings!

[Lyubov]

Nice thread

I eat a salad about every other day but they do get kinda boring sometimes and leave me craving something sweet or heavy