First off, just a reminder!! MY GIVEAWAY ENDS TONIGHT AT 10:00 PM!! I am so excited to randomly select a winner!!! Make sure to enter to win ASAP if you haven't already! The giveaway is for $60 dollars worth of specialty products from my husband's company Muir Gourmet. You can win 5 of my favorite fall goodies! Click HERE to enter!
Now, Let's talk about healthy eating.
Why is it so hard? Well, when I think about it, a lot of the difficulty for me is in finding the time to prepare something healthy and from fresh ingredients. What with school and church commitments, and the stresses of the daily grind, I find it hard to even work in the healthy food options if I haven't planned it in advance.
The other hitch I run into is making sure I have those healthy ingredients in my home when the time to prepare meals comes around. If I don't have it already in the house, chances are I won't have time in my afternoon schedule to do grocery shopping AND cook a decent meal.
These two factors really impede my ability to serve something healthy and fresh in my home. This is why I have really loved taking the time to plan and prep the ingredients for my {Salad Of The Week}!!! Here's the trick... Plan for the salad on the weekend. Do your shopping before the week gets into the swing of busy kid-chauffeuring and homework. On Saturday or Sunday prep your salad ingredients. Have all your lettuce chopped and stored in air tight containers or Ziploc bags with a paper towel inside to catch any excess moisture. This will help it last longer. This is an important step to having your salads ready to rock and roll. Eliminating the time it takes to wash, dry and chop your lettuce really comes in handy on a busy evening or at lunchtime when time seems to always run short. Have all your toppings and meat cooked, chopped, sliced and prepped as best as you can, so that when you have a hankering for a fresh salad it will take almost no time at all!!! This will change your world. I promise!
While shopping on the weekend, make sure to get all the ingredients for your dressing of choice as well. Let me tell you what a difference home made dressing makes. Seriously, people... It only takes a few minutes, and tastes SO much better than anything you can buy at a store. I am sold for life on this simple process.
You'll find that you will be much more motivated to skip the "convenient" drive through, in trade for a fresh, flavorful, homemade salad. Planning and prepping a {Salad Of The Week} has made such a difference in my home. Even my kids are loving these salads, and convincing them (a little more) that salads aren't all that bad. Sometimes they are downright delicious!
So, come along with me on the quest to make healthy eating with fresh ingredients a daily habit and way of life!
On that note, I would love to introduce you to my {Salad Of The Week}:
Belgian Endive and Artisan Lettuce Salad with Apples, Candied Bacon and Creamy Maple Dressing.
You are bound to fall in love with this exciting flavor bouquet of fall ingredients! Enjoy!
Here is my way of prepping all my lettuce for the week. (Seriously can't believe I STILL don't own a salad spinner.) I let my lettuce take a cool bath in the clean sink. This cleans and crisps up the lettuce. Shake it off and lay it out on a towel to dry. Then gently roll it up to catch any excess moisture. Let it sit there for a few minutes.
Then bag it up in Ziploc baggies and make sure to add a paper towel or two. Refrigerate as soon as possible to keep the lettuce at a cool temperature.
Next rinse your Belgian endives and slice them into round discs. I love Belgian endives. They have such a buttery mild flavor and add a meatiness to your greens. They are such a great addition to salads! If you haven't tried these before, I highly recommend them. (They are amazing grilled too.)
Same goes for your Belgian Endives. Bag-em-up and toss them in the fridge. Boom baby!
In this salad I used Honeycrips apples. They are my favorite seasonal apple for fall. They are so juicy and sweet. Taste them once and you will be hooked! Give them a chunky dice. If you would like, you can chop these in advance and sprinkle some lemon juice over them. Then store them in a Ziploc baggie and they will be ready for your salad use!
I don't know about you, but I am a big fan of celery in salads. I love the cool fresh crunch that they add. They were very complimentary to the creamy maple dressing. Yum! When storing your celery for the week, give it a chop, and store it in cool water. This will help it last longer and stay more fresh!
You can either blend these dressing ingredients together, or give them a vigorous whisking. He he. I chose to whisk this batch, and it was lovely. I love real maple syrup. This hint of sweetness was a winner for this delightful fall salad. It was a treat to eat! *This salad dressing was inspired by several different dressing recipes from the book For The Love Of Salad by Jeanelle Mitchell. It is one of my favorite salad cookbooks!
OK. Now here's the kicker. This salad has candied bacon.... Yes, I can almost hear your gasps of unhealthy horror, but here's the thing. If all my salads were zero calories, well, I probably wouldn't crave them quite as much. So this is my mantra. Salads should be a 90-10 deal. 90% super healthy and 10% uber-delicious at whatever the cost. If it takes a little sweetness, or fat for that matter, to make me really want my salads on a daily basis, then so be it! Because you know what? That's a heck of a lot better than the 100% unhealthy of a burger and fries.... Just my way of living. It might not work for everyone, and all my salads aren't in accordance with this rule, but it's a good one to go by I believe. :)
.jpg)
All you have to do to make this devilishly good candied bacon, is coat it in brown sugar. Pop it in an preheated oven at 400 degrees and bake it for 15-20 minutes (or until fully cooked) Make sure to lay bacon out on a wire rack over a lined baking sheet. This allows it to crisp on both sides and drain its excess grease.
Once the bacon is out of the oven, let it cool completely on the wire rack. Next you can either break it into bits, or store it in strips. Whatever suits your fancy! :)
.jpg)
Whether you are in need of a healthy lunch option, or you just want to wow your friends at a party, this salad is a star in its own right. I would eat it any day with a smile. :) I hope you can benefit from my {Salad Of The Week} as much as I have. If you have been trying it along with me, make sure to leave me a message at the bottom of this post! I would love to hear about your healthy eating adventures!
CLICK ON THE RECIPE TO VIEW A PRINTABLE JPG
Enjoy!
xoxo
~Laura
No comments:
Post a Comment