10 tips to making power salads

Does the word “salad” equate to thoughts of weight loss, boredom, or maybe you perceive it as a summertime meal?

Well, hold onto those servers, because we’re about to take a salad from zero to hero!

They’ll be:

• enjoyed year-round
• powerfully nutritious
• filling and satisfying
• your best daily meal
• a visual blast of deliciousness!

My 10 tips to making power salads are:

1. Add darker leaves: Swap out iceberg lettuce for butter lettuce, then progress to romaine, baby spinach, cabbage, zucchini noodles and kale (the darker the leaf, the more nutritiously dense)
2. Work with the rainbow: Forget the ‘greek’ and toss in a riot of colourful veggies & fruits!
3. Sprinkle with seeds: Get those healthy Omega 3’s in with sunflower and pumpkin seeds, raw or lightly toasted, at home!
4. Pre-cut your veggies: What might be stopping you for making a power salad is the preparation, so have pre-cut ingredients on hand!
5. Hold off on oil: Oil supplies calories, without the whole food goodness. Add the real stuff, like olives!
6. Bring on the ‘meat’: By ‘meat’ we mean solids! Protein-dense sprouts, beans or grains like quinoa.
7. Bring on the greens: Never too much, so on a dark bed of greens add some greens beans, peas or asparagus.
8. Hello healthy fats: Avocado! Plus those sprinkling of nuts, seeds and olives. Better added to the salad, rather than mindlessly gobbled up as a snack.
9. Never too cold: Let your salad stand at room temperature and make some warming spicy dressings to heighten their allure in the colder months.
10. Serve as a main: Work towards having a power salad as a main meal once daily. The fibre, the nutritional-density and deliciousness will feed your body, mind & soul!

I would love to see pics of salads you create! Please do share them by tagging @lyncowie and @chic_vegan on Instagram.