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.

“Just as food is needed for the body, love is needed for the Soul.”  Osho

Happy Valentine’s Day! Seriously, this holiday is a blessing in the middle of the winter. It floods our stark winter world with hearts, color and chocolate. Yum!

I love any reason to eat rich, dark chocolate or get roses (Husband – you reading this?). This mid-winter celebration offers much more than a reflection on the romantic loves, or lack of them, in our lives though. The core of all health begins with the love we have for ourselves. Honestly, it sounds cliché, but its true.

Relationships can drastically affect our health. They are a primary food that can nourish our health or bring it out of balance. Relationships with partners, co-workers, friends and family can influence how we feel, our stress, happiness, and motivation. They can effect our eating patterns and the choices we make in regards to our personal vision.

The most primary relationship is, of course, the one we have with ourselves. And nothing effects how we eat more than our mindset.  Do you prioritize your day for someone you don’t value, respect or love? Didn’t think so.

Do you prioritize the time to shop, cook, plan and eat? Do you choose foods that support your love for yourself, and not just your love for that food?  Does your relationship with food leave you satisfied and happy?  Or guilty and shameful? Are you energized and vibrant, or do you cycle through feast and famine? How functional is your relationship with food?

Lot’s of people think that eating healthy and consciously is hard and full of deprivation and bleak, yucky foods. Who wants that? I’m all for eating what we love (see chocolate comments above). I’m all for being healthy and fit. And I’ve come to love the clean, flavorful, real food that energizes and connects me to my vibrant self. I want that for you too. The biggest shift I have had in my own health was when I realized that I could eat without guilt, fear or shame. Honestly, the thought had never occurred to me until I saw speaker David Wolfe during my training at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition.

What are you thinking about after you eat?

This Valentine’s Day make a vow to nourish yourself, care for yourself and share the gift of a healthy and vibrant you with the world. Share the love and reap the happiness in the coming year.

Start today. Buy yourself some flowers. Give a gift to a teacher, friend or lover. Enjoy the chocolate. Celebrate your wonderful self.

Cydney Smith, founder of www.MompreneurWellness.com, helps entrepreneur women, who are also moms, to leverage the power of healthy eating to fuel their success in life and business. When not writing about healthy eating and living, or coaching successful women, Cydney is usually off adventuring with her 2 daughters (8 and 9). She lives with her husband, girls and pets in southwestern NH. Follow on twitter: @cydneysmith