There are so many ways to enjoy vegetables and leafy greens – really the sky is the limit as to the creative dishes you can create from them. One of my tried-and-true favorites of all time is not surprisingly salad. I love salad, but it wasn’t always this way.
While growing up, before I started my health journey, I would begrudgingly eat a small bowl of iceberg lettuce with a slice of tomato or two and maybe some onion all drenched in either bleu cheese, thousand island, or Italian dressing along with my standard western dinner. This was my idea of a salad back then, so when I discovered fruit and vegetable-based eating, I had to significantly alter my point of view on salad, especially the size and contents.
I started with the small-size salads that I was used to, but quickly found that to experience satiety with a salad-based meal that I had to increase my portion size. Nowadays my salads tend to be quite large by most accounts, as you can see in this photo and the quantities of ingredients noted below. Sure, this is a large amount of veggies and leafy greens – If this quantity is too much, one can always half or quarter the ingredients. Here is an experiment one can try – make a salad of this size while cutting the ingredients into smaller pieces than one normally does. Notice how much smaller the salad appears when much of the air space of the salad is removed by condensing the ingredients in this way. Adding a delicious dressing can also condense the salad further. Another option is to blend the salad ingredients and dressing into a delicious soup! These suggestions have historically worked for people getting started with salads or raw veggies.
Here are the ingredients of the salad in this photo:
7 cups chopped or torn Romaine lettuce (329 g, 11.6 oz.)
6 cups chopped or torn red leaf lettuce (170 g, 6 oz.)
3 cups chopped or torn dandelion greens (165 g, 5.8 oz.)
1.5 cups shredded cucumber (227 g, 8 oz.)
1 cup shredded carrots (113 g, 4 oz.)
¼ cup chopped tomato (45 g, 1.6 oz.)
AND here are some of the nutrients in this salad:
The nutrient content of this salad is pretty impressive considering that it only contains 241 kcals! When dressing is added these numbers increase even more, which I’ll show in my next post!