Ladies if you need a way to get your husbands to eat a salad, start with this one. I mean what guy doesn't like steak, then you combine that with mushrooms and gorgonzola cheese, it's a win! The asparagus and tomatoes are there as a way to sneak in some more veggies! The dressing is super simple and adds a fun punch of flavor. It's crisp, it's herbacious, it's delicious.
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One thing we really encourage a lot of our clients to work on is to be more veggies, especially greens. One of the easiest ways to get more greens in is to eat more salads. We love our salads, and try to it one 5 days a week. We aren't just talking about a little side salad with dinner. We are talking full on, stuff my face and stomach salad that is loaded with greens and veggies. We see a lot of people that grasp that concept which is awesome, but then they douse all those quality veggies with some low quality salad dressing.
A couple of tips if you do buy store bought dressings;
If the idea of eating more veggies and cleaning up your eating sounds like something you would be interested in, we will be hosting a special group on Facebook in a little over a week. The group will revolve around having a salad a day for week. We will provide recipes like the one above and some more tips on how to put together an amazingly healthy salad. If you are interested click on the image below and RSVP.
I'm a sucker for chicken salad...always have been and always will be!! Needless to say, I've tried a lot of different varieties, but I've never made it or had it with mango before. I've always liked the versions that have grapes in them for that little extra sweetness so when we had a mango leftover on the counter, I figured why not try it out instead. It worked!!! It was delicious and sweet and salty, with a little bite from the red onion. This will definitely get made again.
Not to completely change topics on you, but one thing I hear from people ALOT is how expensive it is to eat healthy. One thing I want to start doing with some of our blog posts is to add a price component and show you guys what it would cost to make some of the dishes that we make. One of the most important things when it comes to shopping on a budget is buying things that are in season. For example mangoes right now are selling for 80-90 cents per mango. Also buying in bulk is important. If you follow us or have been in an accountability group with us, you know that we love Costco. You can get so much great stuff for pretty cheap! Most of this meal came from Costco but you could easily throw it together for roughly the same price buying everything at a regular grocery store. Here's the breakdown:
That's a better price than anything you will get going through a drive thru and SO much healthier! You could totally eat this on it's own or put it in a Flatout wrap with some spinach and have some veggies on the side you and you have a completely healthy meal for under $4. Also as far as nutrition goes (if you like to watch your macronutrients like I do) each serving will provide you with 381 calories, 19 grams of fat, 19 grams of carbs, 39 grams of protein.
If you are like me and you grew up with the Food Pyramid as your reference to what a healthy diet should look like, then I'm sure you will follow my logic in this post. That pyramid told us to eat a certain number of grains, pastas and cereals. It also mentioned meat and protein, listed dairy as a food group and told you to limit fats. Although if you look closely at the pyramid, fruits and vegetables are separate, but the advice you hear all the time is, "Eat your fruits and veggies." If you follow anyone in the health world, I'm sure you've heard that statement before. If you do a quick google search on the subject you will get results like these:
Experts Recommend 5-9 Servings of Fruits and Vegetables Per Day
Then if you click into some other links from what I would consider well educated institutions like WebMD or Harvard School of Public Health you find that they have articles that lump the two groups together as if they are interchangeable.
So why is this bad advice? Instead of the saying, "Eat your fruits and veggies" it should actually be "Eat your fruits" and "Eat your veggies." The problem comes when you combine the two. Especially when that advice is what we teach our children. If these two food groups are lumped together - like they almost always are - and you have the option to eat sweet fruit versus slightly bitter greens like kale or arugala, which are you going to choose? Which are your children going to choose? The difference between eating 9 bananas in a day versus 9 cups of broccoli is pretty significant.
By comparing these two, the intent isn't to say that fruit is bad or even worse than vegetables, they're just different. It is easy to see though that if a person were to consistently eat a lot of fruit that they would be consuming a lot more calories and a lot more sugar. It is a "natural" sugar but it is still sugar that your body will either use as energy or store as fat if it isn't needed.
My advice would be that you aim for a minimum of 5 servings of vegetables per day...and preferably non-starchy varieties. So that means things like broccoli, cauliflower, various greens (kale, spinach, chard, romaine), carrots, sprouts, jicama, celery, onion, garlic and so on. I know things like avocado, tomatoes, peppers, and squash are technically fruit but for the sake of getting nutrient dense, low calorie foods we will call them fair game for your 5 servings per day. As far as the popular advice out there that says you should eat 9 servings of "fruits and vegetables" per day...that total number is fine in my opinion. If you want to eat more that - even better. I would always strive though to keep your veggie to fruit ratio to be 2:1. So take the 5 servings of non-starchy veggies, add in maybe a sweet potato or regular potato and that gives you 6 servings of veggies. Go ahead and eat three servings of fruit to get that that 9 number! Some advice on fruit selection: if your goal is weight loss try to keep 2 of those 3 fruits lower in sugar content, so things like melons, berries, citrus fruit. Your higher sugar fruits would include things like bananas, apples, grapes, dates, figs, and mangoes. Once again if you don't use that sugar you will store that sugar for energy later in the form of fat. Continue to eat your fruit and continue to eat your veggies but stop lumping them together as one!
If you are a man's man and the only way you would ever eat salad is if it was grilled and has red meat, this is the salad for you. No man would or should ever be ashamed of eating a salad like this.
The idea for this salad totally belongs to a former coworker of mine, Eric Simpson. He is the executive chef and at the golf club I used to work at and was always coming up with super tasty food. Recently I was back out there with some family and someone ordered his version of this salad and it just looked tasty. I actually never tasted it but just got a look at it so I'm not sure if the flavors are similar but the main ingredients are close, I think. This salad would totally be an awesome everyday dinner salad throughout the summer. The smokey char from the romaine pairs perfectly with freshness of the avocado and tomato. The blue cheese rounds it and will help it earn it's spot in your weekly meal rotation. Hope you enjoy this salad.
The hardest part about making this is the chopping and finding fresh ingredients. After that, it is super easy and here is how I did it. I juiced all the citrus in a bowl and added the cider, then I added the jalepeno pepper, onion, and garlic to the citrus juice to "cook" it with the acid so it would take a little bit of the bite away from those ingredients. Then just mix everything together. If you want to make it a little more hearty and make it a main dish, you could add some black beans or maybe some cooked shrimp or chicken. Ingredients
This salad and salad dressing is a staple in our house. Both are super delicious, full of good fats and so satisfying. We make this salad dressing in batches and just keep it in the fridge to use whenever. I highly recommend you get into making your salad dressings so you can control what goes in it. If you read the ingredient lists on a lot of the store bought salad dressings you are going to find a lot of added sugar and preservatives. You won't need preservatives with this dressing because you are going to want to eat all right away.
With this particular salad, I dressed the greens, topped it with the tuna salad, added some chopped yellow bell peppers, and then finished with a sprinkle of paprika. Feel free to add any of your favorite veggies to it. Avocado Tuna Salad
Homemade Balsamic Vinaigrette
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