Garden Chop Salad

I love my garden salads, but you know sometimes it is a struggle to get just the perfect bite on your fork. You know the ones, where you can’t quite get the piece of carrot stabbed onto your fork, or the sunflower seeds all fall off the carefully placed bite. And then there is the bite that is loaded with dressing and the bare bite that didn’t get any dressing at all. And of course the dreadfully embarrassing bite that doesn’t quite all fit into your mouth . . .

As I was pondering this I remembered the days of buying “chop” salads in a bag, they were good and so easy to eat, but the ones I bought were not necessarily the most healthy ingredients, and they certainly lacked the freshness of just picked greens. All of these thoughts led to the idea of deciding to make my own garden chop salad. So off to the garden to pick arugula, spinach, and lettuce . . .

This is not for the faint of heart at the chopping board as it did take some time to chop away. I just added everything I had available in the refrigerator that sounded good in my “chop” salad, then a couple tablespoons of lemon basil dressing, and to my delight, it was worth every minute of chopping. Imagine if this was actually planned out and a shopping list made! 😳

Here’s a list of what I added -

INGREDIENTS -

Butter Lettuce
Spinach
Arugula
Black olives
Thin sliced red onion
Cucumber
Cilantro
Avocado
Roasted pumpkin seeds
Red cabbage
Shredded carrot

Some other ideas I think would be good to add would be some quinoa, a meat or other protein such as chicken or garbanzo beans, or different dressings or seeds. I had a small piece of leftover chicken that was placed on the top - just perfect for balancing that plate to be “veggie heavy”!

This salad doesn’t need much in the way of dressing as all of these vegetables together already create so much flavor. I ended up with a pretty good size bowl and mixed in about 2 tablespoons of my Lemon Basil Vinaigrette, it was perfect.

LEMON BASIL VINAIGRETTE -

1/2 - 1 cup fresh basil leaves, or a handful, no need to accurately measure, you can’t go wrong 😊
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp lemon zest, about half a lemon
2 Tbsp lemon juice
1 Tbsp honey
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp each salt and pepper

Place all of the ingredients into a food processor and pulse until blended and chopped.

You will enjoy every bite of this salad because every bite will have all of the flavors contained in it. This will become a regular menu item for me now, worth the effort of the chopping! Enjoy!