How To Maintain Your Sanity With Cold Salads

It's hard for anyone to keep sane when juggling work and home life. Somehow the line between those two worlds tends to blur and you're left with more than you can handle and no time to cook. Or someone will come home hungry and you'll have to quickly switch from your working person mode to homemaker mode. Both men and women struggle with this delicate balance, and more often than not, crumble under the weight of fast food take out. Enter the cold salad: one of the most under-used dishes in your diet arsenal.

A cold salad is perfect. It can be served at any time, straight from the fridge to your plate. It doesn't have to be boring. It is the ultimate packed lunch food, ready and waiting, a one-dish wonder. Best of all it's easy to fit around a diet.

To prepare your own cold salad, first you need a general theme (Asian, Italian, Greek, etc...) and then you need to creatively combine the following ingredients:

1)    Pick one or more vegetables: bell peppers, spinach leaves, broccoli, tomato, basil, kale, peas, corn etc...

2) Pick a starch: baked potato, sweet potato, couscous or whole wheat pasta, whole grain slice of bread or pita

3)    Pick a dressing: lemon juice, olive oil, honey mustard, variety of vinegars

Avoid: mayonnaise, oily peanut sauce, croutons, bacon, blue cheese, ranch, or anything creamy

With these guidelines in mind, the combinations are endless! Sign up for my mailing list at LisaShanken.com and get access to over 200 recipes, including lots of cold, easy-to-prepare salads!

What's your favorite cold salad? Let me know.