Shaking up Your Salads

Salad is a go to work lunch, quick throw together and ready to take anything you need to use up, but it’s easy to get into a rut. Who wants to eat the same old lettuce, vinaigrette and chicken breast every single day? So here are some ways to perk up your salads with different flavours, textures, without a lot of extra time in the kitchen:-

Smooth it out

Crunch is all well and good, but the perfect accompaniment to crunchy salad or raw onions is often a little something smooth, like roasted beets, winter squash or maybe some avocado slices.

Heat it up

Tossing just one or two warm elements onto a salad can switch up the whole experience in interesting ways.  The classic is to make the protein warm, a chicken breast hot off the grill, tossed with lettuce onions and toppings.  But you could also add all kinds of warmer mix-ins.

Dressings

Adding a different dressing can completely change the entire character of a salad.  Sure olive oil and vinegar is convenient, but even a basic vinaigrette is easy to modify with different spices.  There’s lots of low calorie options available in most supermarkets.

Adding sweetness

The beauty of salad is that a little can get a nice sweet flavour in your whole meal without dumping on a huge pile of sugar.  The classic suggestions are to either use hone in the dressing or add some fruit – berries, pomegranate, pears, peaches, citrus would all work well depending on what you’re working with.

Add some crunch

One of the fun parts about eating salad is enjoying all the different textures.  Sure salad vegetables less can be crunchy (depending on what you pick), but you can also try to experiment with toppings.  Slivers of almonds, Brazil nuts or just raw cabbage.  Supermarkets do dried onions and bacon bits that can also be added to add extra crunch.

Cheese

Add 30g extra mature cheese (125 cals), finely grated or Feta cheese 60g (150 calories) to add extra flavour.  Always opt for mature cheeses as you will need less!

Olives

Add some green or black olives to add extra flavour, texture and taste.

Successes/Awards at this weeks meetings

This week across all five meetings a total of 208 marbles were lost, we had some amazing losses and lots of awards and certificates were given out too!  A big well done everyone.

Awards

Target – The lovely Suzie reached her target weight having lost over two stone since joining BEEWEIGHED in March.  She lost six stone previously with Lynda and has now lost a massive 8 stone – she’s looking absolutely fantastic.  I’m super proud of her!!!!  Well done!

  • Super Sevens went to Angela and Pat
  • 25lb Award went to Tina
  • Jeanette got her stone award
  • Slimmers of the week went to Lorraine, Angela, Rose, Jacqui and Daniella

Massive well done everyone, have a brilliant week.  Next week we are discussing Alcohol and Mocktails!

 

SUGARS

This week we’re discussing the main 3 sugar types, where they are found and the amount you should be having per day.