The Best Salads

I do like a good salad but when I was growing up, "salad" meant some cucumber, some little gem lettuce and a flavourless hard tomato, with salad cream if you were lucky.  Nowadays shops, palettes and awareness of alternatives have all caught up so the humble salad is now not quite so humble even if my son did say recently (while eating a piece of cucumber) "Girls eat salad!"

Salads are a great way to increase the amount of vegetables in your diet fairly easily.  There aren't many of us who manage 5 a day on a regular basis but put a salad in your lunchbag instead of a sandwich and you're well on your way.

Seeing the weather is unseasonably warm in the UK right now, I thought I'd share with you some of my favourite "more interesting" salad recipes.

My favourite has to be Goats Cheese Salad.  Goats cheese is pretty rich but the dressing and slight bitterness of the nuts offsets it nicely.

Also brilliant if you're trying to cut down on carbohydrates with lots of healthy oils in the olive oil and nuts.

Believe it or not, people actually buy coleslaw.  It's so easy to make yourself and much nicer too I think.  Adding a little apple also makes it much more popular with children and it's a great barbecue side dish, just keep in the fridge until the food is ready.

Indian salads are mostly ignored in UK restaurants but I've included three Indian style dishes.  The classic Kachumber, Indian carrot salad and chickpea (garbanzo bean) salad.

A great way for Indian food to not feel so heavy and rich.

Please excuse the photo I think I took this on my phone but my Vietnamese style salad which is a kind of cross over of two Vietnamese recipes is just lovely.  Great warm or cold for lunch the next day, you'd never guess no fat is added to this and that the chicken is cooked skin off.

It is courgette (zucchini) season right now and a simple salad makes the most of this vegetable you might not have considered eating raw or why not have a tomato salad in your lunchbox?

Salads are also a great way of using up leftovers as you can see from this old recipe for a Salmon pasta salad.  It's a great thing if you're thinking "that salmon portion is too big to cook for my child".  Simply cook it but only serve half and save the rest for tomorrow.

Don't forget the kids though, this recipe for potato salad was something I was serving when my child first started on foods with more texture.  A great way to make a dish to take out that's easy to serve wherever you are.

As kindly suggested, below I've linked this up to made from pinterest and another linky here.