Ditch the iceberg lettuce, wedges of tomato and cucumber drenched with store-bought dressing!
Instead of flavourless lettuce look for other leafy greens - baby spinach and rocket are a good start. The darker the green colour, the better. Browse around the fresh produce section of your supermarket for inspiration.
For the tomatoes, try cherry tomatoes. Drizzle them with a bit of olive oil, salt and black pepper and grill them until they are just bursting their skins and are ever-so-slightly charred. To this you could add some strips of sweet red pepper. Cool before adding to the salad.
By all means use cucumber but deseed it first. Cut the cucumber into half and then half again lengthwise and the seed is easy to scoop out before chopping into bite sized pieces.
Other veg that can be added, budget permitting, are baby corn snapped into pieces, sugar snap peas with the strings pulled off, spring onions and baby radish. Again, browse around that fresh produce section!
Roast veg, once cooled, makes for an awesome salad mixed with something like pearled barley as a base. Here is a great recipe for roast veg. Simply boil your pearled barley in some veg or chicken stock until it is soft, drain, let it cool and mix with the roast veg. Add some protein with cubes of feta cheese.
If you need a bit of crunch, instead of croutons which do nothing for your health, try nuts and seeds or some fresh sprouts. Use drained chickpeas for protein and fibre. So many options!
Store-bought dressings are convenient but are really not good for us as they usually contain unhealthy oils and too much sugar and sodium along with preservatives. Here we share two of our favourite dressings.
Lemon Mint Dressing
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup fresh chopped mint leaves
3 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon Dijon Mustard
2 teaspoons crushed garlic
1/4 teaspoon salt
10 twists of ground black pepper
Put all in a jar and shake very well. This recipe makes about 300 ml of dressing.
Orange Cinnamon Dressing
1 fresh orange (use 1 teaspoon of the zest plus 80ml of the juice)
15 ml balsamic vinegar
15 ml honey
45 ml olive oil
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
pinch of salt
Shake all together well. This amount makes enough for a salad for 4 people but keeps in the fridge for a while so feel free to double or triple the recipe.