Salads Galore!

There are a plethora of combinations you can throw together to make delicious salads with, which I love. Who doesn't like variety? Here are some salads that we have tried and enjoyed:

Tip: we prepare all of our ingredients ahead of time and keep them in separate containers in the fridge, except for tomatoes - they go bad too quickly. As long as you wash and dry your lettuce when you cut it up, it will stay good in the refrigerator in a container for about 1 and 1/2 to 2 weeks.

Chicken salad with chickpeas, diced tomatoes, cucumber slices, sunflower seeds, shredded carrots, small chunks of cheese that we cubed, and canned pineapple chunks. We have topped it with light Caesar dressing and light balsamic vinaigrette as well as a blue cheese yogurt dressing and all of them taste good. I like to think of this combination as a sort of Hawaiian haystack salad. When we ran out of pineapple chunks, I also enjoyed using a pear that I cut up. We don't always use all of the toppings above either. For instance, today we had it with chicken, chickpeas, shredded colby jack cheese, and I added canned sliced peaches to mine. We had it with light Caesar dressing and it was so tasty!

Taco salad (using either chicken or ground turkey for the meat), diced tomatoes, salsa, sour cream, cheese, and beans (pinto, black, kidney, or a mix of all three). Avocado/guacamole tastes amazing with this as well! We used to make this salad before we started this diet, so we would always crush some tortilla chips on top. Sadly I haven't found any whole grain tortilla chips, so we haven't done this for a while. If you want to use up your top of the pyramid category to eat tortilla chips though, then go for it!

Another delicious kind of salad is one with tons of fruits and almonds or pecans. Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, pears, mangoes, peaches, you name it! And with feta cheese...yum! But we can't afford that, so we use colby jack because it's cheap and tastes good. Also, cheese isn't a necessary for salads if you don't want to use up one of your dairy servings for the day.

Seriously there are so many ways to make delicious salads that adhere to this food plan! Try adding a fish for your meat to mix things up!