the one with the salads

A fear of vegetables is something most people get over by the age of 10, but my fear lasted well into my early 20's. I travelled abroad during college and realized that other places on Earth outside of America really don't give you the option to dislike vegetables. Of course that's an extremely broad statement, but it was time abroad, both a summer in New Zealand and a summer in Africa, that I learned to get over my fear or go hungry.

The first thing I learned to like were beans - green beans, peas (are peas a bean?), black beans, etc. Next came squash and zucchini. Later on it was asparagus and sauteed cherry tomatoes and most anything that had been cooked thoroughly. I still have a pretty hard time with raw veggies - I think it's the texture - which has made it particularly challenging to get into eating salads. Then came spinach. For whatever reason, I don't find spinach as absolutely detestable as lettuce. I find lettuce to have a certain, how do you say, 'tastes like garbage'? But spinach has been my saving grace in the world of trying to eat healthier. Using spinach as the base, I have two tasty go-to salads that keep me eating a little healthier day-to-day.

First - the Strawberry Spinach Salad:

This one's pretty common these days - I believe Panera even has a version of it now.

Ingredients:
Spinach
Strawberries
Blueberries
Avocado
Parmesan Cheese
Almond slivers
Poppyseed Dressing

You can add or subtract whatever ingredients you like, but I've found through trial and error that typical salad toppings like tomatoes, for example, don't mix so well with the taste of the other fruits. At it's simplest, I make this salad with spinach, strawberries, Parmesan and dressing. I've also done this salad with chicken and honey mustard (instead of poppyseed) if I'm looking for more protein. If you like to make a large portion and keep eating from it for a few days, I'd suggest not adding the avocados in the big batch. They get slimey and throw off the whole salad. Instead, add fresh avocado to your single serving each day.

Second - the Tuscan Bean Salad:

Homemade Tuscan Bean Salad

This one is an imitation of a Tuscan bean salad I had a local restaurant recently (Blue Highway Pizza in Tioga Town Center). They charged me $10 for this and it was delicious, so I decided to try to start making it myself for a fraction of the cost per salad.

The Ingredients:
Spinach
Feta Cheese
Sun Dried Tomatoes
White Cannellini Beans
Kalamata Olives
Balsamic Vinaigrette

At the restaurant, they also put regular olives and red onions on it, but since I don't like raw onions, I left them out. The regular olives I just forgot to buy this time around - I was a little frustrated after six trips around the grocery store and phone call to my dad in order to find sun dried tomatoes, so the regular olives didn't make it into the cart. The restaurant version used a lemon vinaigrette - which was amazing with this salad. However, it's hard to find already made in stores and I didn't feel like making it at the time. Maybe later I'll post my luck with a homemade dressing!

I eyeballed the measurements and figured up the calories - it totaled around 330 calories for the plate pictured above. I would say depending on how much of each item you add, it could probably vary from 250 to 400 calories. This salad left me feeling full - the fiber and protein in the beans helped with that! I'd say it's a great low-cal dinner or lunch option if you aren't totally starving when you sit down to eat. It could also be paired with a small amount of pasta or toast to boost your energy with some carbs and fill you up a little more.

The dressing you use also plays a huge part in the calorie count. My new favorite dressings are the Bolthouse Farms line -- which are typically 1/3 to 1/2 of the calories of other brands. Their dressings are yogurt based for the creamy ones and I'm not sure exactly what they do in the vinaigrettes to make them so low cal. I compared the Bolthouse Farms balsamic to the Panera brand balsamic next to it at the grocery store, and it was 30 calories compared to 90 calories of the same serving size. The taste is not compromised at all with the yogurt base or healthier ingredients - I actually prefer these dressings to their more caloric counterparts. FYI - the Bolthouse Farms dressings are located in the produce section -  they do need to be refrigerated and don't have quite as long of a shelf life because of the healthier / non-preservative ingredients.

A few nights of these tasty and filling salads for dinner a week are keeping me on track to a healthier lifestyle and closer to bringing that prepster style to the surface!

Do you have any other salad recipes that highlight spinach as the base or non-raw veggies as the star? I'd love to hear about them in the comment section! I may no longer be afraid of veggies, but I'm still a picky eater at heart :)

Thanks for stopping by!

-Sarah
The Prepster Within

More about the Bolthouse Farms brand: http://bolthouse.com/