BellaOnline Forums Food and Wine Low Carb Daily Salad Recipe Tips

I had a friend over tonight to do a white wine tasting, to help her learn about all the various types of white wine. We started with cheese and shrimp, then we made a pair of large salads as our meal. It was delicious! I ran out earlier today to get a bunch of fresh salad items to prepare for this.

We had both "7-type" lettuce blend along with spinach as the base. Then organic little tomatoes, white and orange cheddar cheese, pine nuts, pecan bits, bacon bits, raisins.

To top it, a gluten-free, dairy-free ranch dressing which was really quite good! I'll write that up shortly.

I definitely encourage everyone to eat a salad daily, they are delicious if you mix up the ingredients each day!

Yummy! And I agree about the salad a day. I make a huge bowl of greens and fixins every day and munch on it for a couple of hours while I'm writing.....I have learned to eat much slower and it keeps my metabolism going. Woohooo, I'm actually eating these days, as with everything, you don't realize how much you enjoyed something until you can't do it or have it.

So I mix up small portions of a variety of foods each day and my standard dressing (although I love ranch so do post your recipe!) is extra virgin olive oil with balsamic or red wine or apple cider vinegar and fresh cracked pepper and sea salt, sometimes with roasted garlic.

I don't make my own ranch, I buy a low carb ranch dressing from the store. I suppose I should look into making my own, I will give that a try!

My boyfriend really gets sick to the stomach from the smell of balsamic vinegar so as much as I love it, I try not to have that very often.

My salad today was a base of the 7-lettuce mix and spinach. Then oraganic tomatoes, pine nuts, pecan bits, a mix of raisins / dried cranberries / dried something else (I'm drawing a blank). Plus home made bean sprouts!! I am so happy this is my first ever eating of these bean sprouts. I'll post a whole thread about them. Topped with Organicville 1 carb non-dairy organic ranch dressing. It is gluten free! No trans fats. No cholesterol. I'll be writing this up soon! Oh two kinds of cheese, and sage from my garden! The sage grew back all on its own.

Yummm! Eat a salad every day!

Here are some photos of my salad with the fresh home-grown sprouts!!

Salad for today - still working at these same sprouts! It is amazing how many grow from one set of seeds. Lettuce mix, organic tomatoes, pine nuts, pecan bits, bacon bits, yellow and white cheese, and piles of sprouts. Also a new "Marie's Raspberry Viniagrette" with no trans fat and no preservatives. Very tasty. However it is 8g of carbs and its first two ingredients are:

water
high fructose corn syrup

so I won't be buying this again! It is tasty but like eating liquid candy

hmmmm sounds fantastic. Salad does too.

I haven't had a salad yet today - but Bob is being devious and he already started a whole new batch of sprouts! We haven't even finished the old sprouts yet! Yaaaagggghhhhhhhh we are going to be in sprout overload!!

I decided to do a variation on a pasta salad that I have made for years; making it pasta-less.

The dressing is: (all these measurements are very approximate, sorry)
1/2 C mayo
2 Tbsp dijon mustard
2 Tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp minced garlic
1 bunch of fresh dill finely chopped
(just whisk all these ingredients together)

Then add a package of either salad shrimp or we used medium size shrimp (tails removed0
Also, thinly slice 1 cucumber and add to dressing
and slice 1-2 carrots and add to dressing (or buy a package of carrot "coins" and skip the work)

Put the shrimp, cucumbers, carrots & dressing in the fridge to kind of "meld" for about an hour. Then serve over spring mix.

Lisa, you could probably add some sprouts to this, too! (And thinking about it, I bet some radishes would be very tasty as well).

That sounds delicious. You could also use chicken in there. THat would be a good substitute. Or maybe flaked tuna. You could use it over rice or qunios (sp?), or low-carb pasta.