5 Easy Steps to a Salad You’ll Love to Eat!

Here is a system for eating more salads. Create a salad bar in your fridge. It’s simple, easy and I guarantee you will eat more vegetables. Seriously.

You pick the salad components that you like, the more choices the better. Through out the week you will have a system in place to quickly and easily make a salad that will suite your taste, mood and hunger level, with little to no mess.

Follow the 5 easy steps to eating more salads below. Create the salad bar to your own taste and organize it your way. What’s great about this system is its flexibility. Challenge yourself to boost the variety of vegetables you add in each week. 

5 Easy Steps to Creating a Salad Bar in Your Fridge:

1. Make a list of your favorite vegetables, proteins and salad bar items. Add a variety of lettuces and dark leafy greens to the list. I like to have romaine, spinach, a farm fresh mesclun salad mix, leaf lettuce, and beet greens on hand as a base. Consider 5 add-ins for your salad to start. Such as carrots, cucumbers, olives, crisp green peas, snap peas, snow peas, red cabbage, raw beets, chick peas, a variety of radishes, sprouts, sliced hard boiled egg, goat feta, lentils, walnuts, salmon, chicken, shrimp…to name just a few potential additions to your salad. You don’t have to add all of them at one time. It’s so you have a variety to choose from.

2. Purchase these items with your weekly grocery or farmer’s market trip. Buy local, fresh vegetables and organic when you can. You will eat more veggies with this system, so plan accordingly. Shop for one to two weeks.

3. Prepare the items for storage and use. This only takes about 15-20 minutes a week to prepare. And you’ll have a variety of fresh salads to suit your hunger level and taste buds all week. Start with all the add-ins. Wash, chop/cut as needed. I put each item into its own glass Pyrex storage container. I prefer the glass containers and they stack nicely in the fridge. Being able to see each item is key to the salad bar system. I wash and spin-dry the greens. A salad spinner makes this easy, and I recommend you get one if you don’t already have it. I place the greens in either a large storage container or plastic bag with a few paper towels to absorb moisture. Change the paper towels when needed.

4. Clear a space in your fridge. I keep one side of a shelf in the fridge for my salad bar. You can stack the smaller containers in a larger container or on a tray, pulling it out of the fridge when you need it. Remember to keep it easily accessible. A random collection of storage containers hidden through out the fridge will not get used!

5. Prepare your salad. When it is time to make your salad, everything is ready to go. You can add in all your toppings or just a few. It takes only a few minutes and the salad is done, with no additional clean up.

This system isn’t just for summer. Use it year round, changing some of the vegetables with the seasons. In the fall you’ll love it for the ease of packing school snacks, a quick lunch, or a convenient dinner addition.

Follow the 5 easy steps and you’ll be on your way to feeling lighter, cooler and full of energy.

Let me know if you give it a try. Share your ideas and results with the Mompreneur Wellness Community on Facebook. I’ve selected a few of my favorite salad bar tools, like the salad spinner and Pyrex containers, at the Mompreneur Wellness Store. Stop by and take a look.

Here’s to staying cool with fresh veggies this summer, cheers!

* Cydney Smith, is the Mompreneur Health Coach and founder of MompreneurWellness.com. She educates and coaches entrepreneur women, who are also moms, on how to use healthy, real food and lifestyle changes to fuel their success. To receive weekly tips to fuel your success with healthy foods sign-up for “The Edge” the Mompreneur Wellness Newsletter. Cydney, her husband and 2 daughters live in the southwestern New Hampshire.