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Does anyone here prepare for the entire week's salad on Sunday and fill it up in their lunch boxes? I have started to love salads, but takes lot of time for preparing. I am somewhat short of time during weekdays, so was wondering if it's possible to prepare them on weekends and would they remain fresh for the entire week?
I am vegetarian, so my salads would mostly be veggies and beans.
I love big vegetable based salads. Unfortunately I have found they do not last beyond a few days.
If someone else has a trick I am missing I would love to know it!
The above link is one idea and supposedly good for 5 days ahead.
You can also just prep them into 5 lunch containers and place the wet stuff in it's own container. I make hubby's a few days at a time. he "mixes" and matches them from the fridge. (I have 3 different types of salad and 3 different dressings) Beans, wet veggies etc usually go with the dressing so it soaks it up.
I think the key is to keep all ingredients separate until you're ready to make a salad. Also, having fridge with good temperature & humidity control helps.
I use romaine, green leaf or red leaf lettuce. I tear it, not cut it up. I store it in a large Tupperware bowl with a paper towel on the bottom & on the top to soak up excess moisture.
I prefer diced tomatoes, but they sometimes won't last all week. So grape tomatoes (stored at room temperature) are a good plan.
Mushrooms don't last long at all and are even worse if cut up too soon. I store mine in a brown paper bag in the crisper.
Chopped bell peppers, green onions, cucumbers & ham I store in the fridge in separate glass containers with lids.
I use shredded medium cheddar and keep it in a zip loc bag in a meat/cheese crisper.
Before work, I assemble a salad to take for lunch each day.
Some people swear by those "green boxes" to keep veggies fresh in the fridge forever. Might be worth looking into for keeping prepped salads also. They look kinda like sealed, green Tupperware containers, and I have browsed them on Amazon. Not sure of the complete name.
I bring salad to work a lot. Usually I cut up roasted veggies, tomatoes, and radishes, put them in a separate container, you could add beans, sometimes I add chicken of whatever else is leftover. I put some mixed greens in a ziplock, have sunflower seeds at work and some dressing in the fridge there and just assemble it on a plate and eat. I'm not sure if you'll be able to pull it off for all 5 days but if you keep the greens separate it will help.
Does anyone here prepare for the entire week's salad on Sunday and fill it up in their lunch boxes? I have started to love salads, but takes lot of time for preparing. I am somewhat short of time during weekdays, so was wondering if it's possible to prepare them on weekends and would they remain fresh for the entire week?
I am vegetarian, so my salads would mostly be veggies and beans.
veggies and beans? Aren't beans veggies?
Now for your answer, there are salads that don't take long to make, but trying to make a weeks supply on Sunday would leave you with some pretty dull salads. Salads are made, for the most part to be eaten fresh. There are some, like cold slaw and bean salad that can get better with age. You might get more ideas if you post this on the vegetarian thread.
I love salads as well. Here's a cheat for the greens:
Buy them already mixed, cleaned, and boxed. Olivia's packages organic salads, I usually get either theirs or whatever's on sale at the local supermarket. Pretty sure most big-box stores carry it as well. I buy only either the spring mix, or (in the case of Olivia's - no one else mixes it this way) the Spring Mix with Herbs.
You can buy a half pound of pre-mixed greens, no hearts or cores or anything that you'd have to throw away. One half-pound package should last you the better part of a work-week, if you're using it as a base and adding other stuff to it.
You can dice up tomatoes and onions in the same container.
You can make the dressing in another container.
Then any "wet" legumes/beans go in another container, dry nuts go in yet another. All of these are things you'd be keeping on a regular basis, people can pick what they like, however they prefer it, or they could grab a few pinches of nuts just to eat "as is" or mix some of the tomato/onion with olive oil, lemon juice, a pinch of basil and some minced garlic and dump it on some toasted italian bread for a cheap, quick bruschetta.
The beans, again, can be consumed as is, or toss in soup, or add to the greens.
The point is that you have the different "types" of ingredients all contained separately from each other, and buy the greens already picked, washed, ripped, dried, and packaged. Much less waste so even though it's more expensive this way, you consume all of it instead of throwing half the core/heart/outer leaves/stems away.
Salads really do not take that much time to prepare. I buy the bagged salads, it takes just a few moments to open a can of beans and olives, 2- 3 minutes to thinly slice an onion. I prepare mine for the night I am going to eat it and will have leftovers for 1-2 more nights. Actually I am getting tired of salad. I work at Subway so I eat salads there.
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