Lately I have discovered salad kits. This doesn't mean that I have quit cooking/baking. It means that the cooking/baking necessitate salad only meals. So lots of times all we have for dinner is a salad from a kit.
Now, don't feel sorry for Lee. He is frequently the instigator of these meals. He doesn't see the point in eating three meals a day and if we eat out for one of those meals he claims he isn't hungry for hours. Sometimes even the next morning. I am not starving the man!
The nice thing about salad kits is that they have a mixture of greens, veggies, topping and dressings. One bag is just right for the two of us. Which is good, because they do not keep well. Once the dressing is on you have to eat it. They become a soggy mess overnight in the refrigerator.
They would also work for a family if there is a main dish. Add a casserole or a protein and you are good to go. We sometimes add in frozen pre-cooked chicken and then it is like a fancy restaurant salad. Well it is no longer frozen when we add it of course. Let it thaw and then heat it briefly.
These are from Walmart, but you can also buy some very nice ones at other grocery stores. They can't compete with the salads from Trader Joe's, but they are a great idea for us. We get a delicious salad with a lot of variety without having a bunch of produce go bad in the refrigerator bin. They are inexpensive and not too bad on fat and calories.
Your dinner menu sounds a bit like ours of late with lots of salads, which we also "accessorize" with add-ons like cottage cheese, tuna, chicken, beans, olives, cubed cheeses or roll-ups of cheese and turkey for a chef's salad. We have not used the salad kits, but now buy a package of romaine lettuce hearts and find we waste less than buying the whole head. That way is cheaper, but some weeks we were tossing unused lettuce. Grenville isn't starving either and quite often he has the same comment as Lee about not being hungry, so not feeling the need to eat 3 meals. For us, it's breakfast and either a late lunch or dinner, but not both. We do snack in between usually with nuts and sometimes fruit.
ReplyDeleteI stopped buying salad kits because as you note they don't keep well. There were also a number of recalls on them there for a while. But I agree they can be useful at times.
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