A common diet recommendation involves eating foods of every color on a daily basis. This advice is directly reminiscent of salads which are filled with a variety of foods including many vegetables and fruits. Salad, as a category, encompasses many different types of dishes from desserts to garden salads to warm and hearty winter meals.
Salads many times embody a particular style of food. For instance, southwestern salads include ingredients often found in tacos or burritos, and Mediterranean salads include things like feta cheese, tomatoes, olives, and artichokes. This is why people can forego the recipe and make their own versions of salads, simply mixing together ingredients that usually are served together. When making a salad as the main course, the basic components include some form of protein, whether meat or beans, lots of vegetables, both leafy greens and things like tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers, some form of starch including rice, beans, or potatoes, and a dressing.
Convenience is another benefit of adding salads to your meal plan. Preparation generally includes simply chopping the ingredients and mixing everything together. Plus, with such a wide flavor profile in a single salad, you can make a large batch at the beginning of the week and package it separately for a week’s worth of lunches. Mason jar salads are another version of this and include layering each Mason jar with the salad ingredients and then mixing before eating. Basically, all salads can be easily customized to a family’s particular taste. This blog shares some salad recipe favorites as well as tips for making your own.