kerravonsen | Life Hack: Salad Prep (Reply)

I have a new salad regime. After a family holiday in Bendigo, where we had salad all the time, I was reminded how much I really do like a simple garden salad. Nothing fancy, just your basic lettuce/tomato/cucumber will do. But I don't like the salad prep. Too much to bother with for one person. But I have hit upon a scheme that works for me.

Ingredients:

Two Baby Cos Lettuce
Four (Vine-ripened) tomatoes
- I buy 500g of tomatoes, which is usually four tomatoes, but sometimes it's five smaller ones. That's okay, I just use all of them.
Four Lebanese cucumbers

Tools:

Four bowl-shaped takeaway containers with lids -- not every takeaway place uses them, but some do, and I have accumulated enough of them. These are not small bowls, but large, meal-sized bowls.
Large knife.
Chopping board.

Method:

Take off the damaged/wilted leaves from the outside of the lettuces. Rinse the rest. (You can go as far as breaking off all the leaves, washing them, and putting them into a salad spinner to get the water off, but I don't bother).
Chop the lettuces with a knife, don't break them up. Distribute the lettuce evenly, with a mixture of the top and bottom parts of the leaves in each bowl.
Chop the cucumber into slices, one cucumber for each bowl.
Chop the tomatoes into eighths (that is, into quarters vertically, and then cut in half horizontally while holding it together with the other hand). One tomato per bowl.
- I like to make sure that the tomato pieces are skin-down in the bowl, that way they aren't going to spill their seeds over the other stuff. And they absorb the seasoning better when you season them.
Put the lids on the bowls and stick them in the fridge. Since the lids make them airtight, they keep pretty well.
- Though if you leave them too long, the lettuce will start to brown at the edges. Still edible, though.
- Do NOT add seasoning or dressing to the salads at this stage. Adding them at this point can cause the vegetables to wilt quicker.
Take them out during the week, season with salt and pepper or salad dressing; add chunks of meat or cheese.

Delicious, healthy, easy!

You might prefer to substitute cherry tomatoes for the normal-sized tomatoes; these have the advantage that you don't have to chop them up. But I'm not sure that only one punnet of cherry tomatoes is enough for four meal-sized salads.

You might want to add different vegetables for more variety, but I find the simple three-ingredient version is fine with me.

The other thing I do is cook a small roast (beef) in my air-fryer, chop up two thirds of it into a takeaway container, eat the remaining third hot (with one of the salads), and that way I have nice meat to add to the salads later on in the week. If I don't have a roast, I eat the salads with something else, sometimes tinned tuna, sometimes chicken, sometimes Fetta cheese. I've even eaten them with freshly fried egg, but that isn't my preference (I'd rather have fried eggs on toast). I expect they would be nice with boiled eggs, but if I ever knew the secrets of boiling eggs successfully, I have forgotten them. It's easier to fry or scramble them.

I hope this may be helpful to some of you. Do you have any food-prep hacks that make your life easier? Do tell us!