The healthy hack that’s helping me eat more salad
Eating well is always something I’ve struggled with.
I guess I hoped my tastes would evolve as I got older and I’d start to want to eat salads and salmon and all the “grown-up food” that grown-ups seemed to love. That didn’t happen. (Salmon makes me want to upchuck.)
I love “kid food.” I would rather eat a cheeseburger and fries than just about anything else. Well, that or chicken fingers and fries. Or nuggets? You get the picture. NOT IDEAL when you’re 35 and pear-shaped, you know?
Just because healthy eating doesn’t come naturally to me doesn’t mean I don’t TRY, TRY, TRY all the damn time to be better at it. After all, I want to be healthy, I want my kids to see me being healthy, and most importantly I want THEM to be healthy.
My wise little sis once told me no one *likes* salad, but they eat it because it’s healthy, good for them, etc. I have since heard from several people who really do LOVE salad (I’m looking at you, Sylvia!) which baffles me.
I do not love salad.
But dammit, I’m trying.
I regularly get delicious and healthy meals from a local business called Supper by Sylvia, and the soups (and some of the other dishes) come in these great clear plastic containers — 500ml and 1L. These suckers are great. I hoard them, put them through the dishwasher, etc. and they’re pretty much indestructible.
So over the last couple of months, I’ve been using them to pre-make salads in an attempt to get me eating more salad.
They’re nothing fancy. A three-pack of Romaine lettuce hearts, mixed with a giant pack of grape tomatoes (I do love those), green onion, sometimes red onion, etc.
Sometimes I’ll add chicken or egg or cheese, but usually I keep them “plain,” stick them in the fridge, and then they’re eat to grab once or twice a day.
What makes these salads palatable is what I add to them!
If we BBQ or bake hamburgers, I’ll melt cheese on a patty, add condiments, cut it up and sprinkle it over my salad to make CHEESEBURGER SALAD.
The next one is really my go-to: TACO SALAD.
We eat tacos once a week, so I’ll reheat a little bowl of taco meat and pour it over one of my pre-made salads. Sometimes I’ll crumble a shell inside for crunch, or have a shell on the side to scoop up the salad.
(Once we bought a bag of reeeeeeeally spicy Doritios in some weird new flavour, and they were too spicy even for Darling Husband. So I would take a handful, crush them in a sandwich bag, and sprinkle them into my taco salad. Mmmmmm!)
TUNA SALAD isn’t something I’d ever eaten in my life up until this year or last year, I think. But it’s OK. I like that I can always find a can in the cupboard. It’s like, wow, ready-made meat without any cooking. Genius! 😀
We cook chicken breasts once a week, so I’ll save some of the chicken in a container and make CHICKEN SALAD with it. Sometimes I mix it with salsa and add it to my pre-made salad, and other times I’ll mix it with a bit of Caesar dressing.
I reeeeeeally like making chicken salad and then packing it into a tortilla and toasting it in a frying pan on the stove to get crispy.
If we have a bit of bacon to add to my chicken salad, I have CLUBHOUSE SANDWICH SALAD. Yum!
And, of course, sometimes I’ll turn one into plain ol’ CAESAR SALAD and have it as a side dish with something the rest of the family is eating.
We often have random leftovers in the fridge, so sometimes I’ll nuke them for a minute or two and dump them into one of my salads. Mmm, RANDOM LEFTOVERS SALAD.
Leftover steak is excellent for this. (Not to mention the treat of having garlic cheese bread on the side!)
I have even turned my salads into EGG & BACON SALAD WRAPS. I guess what I’m saying is I like bacon and I like wraps?
I know this “hack” isn’t exactly rocket science — especially for those of you who LIKE SALAD, OMG — but it’s definitely been helping me eat more salad.
Knowing those little containers are in the fridge, ready to grab — and maybe add something to — has been super helpful in my attempt to trick myself into eating healthier …
… and reinforced that I will eat just about anything as long as it’s QUICK AND EASY!
One Comment on “The healthy hack that’s helping me eat more salad”
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Heather's Handmade Life 
Great ideas! I really need to get on the meal prep train more for the work week lunches. I don’t mind salads, but like you I have to have some interesting stuff on them to make me want to eat them. Feta cheese will make me want to eat pretty much any kind of salad though 🙂
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