Cheating with Salads

Apart from hayfever plaguing me throughout this otherwise gorgeous season, summer for me is also accompanied by apprehension that the girls around me will be transformed into one of those feminine creatures that I both deride and envy: the females that eschew the sofa and the TV for the gym, and carbs in favour of salad. Worse, some people seem to think that vegans live on salad, despite it making a rare appearance in my diet (i.e. once every couple of months on top of a burger or served on the side with a restaurant meal).

But then I got run-down because I was eating too much crap, and I wanted to lose some weight without abandoning my favourite food group, so here is a quick-fire post (juggling work, blogging, uni work, and independent writing is more time-consuming that I had anticipated) on how to eat salads the fat way.

Heat It Up

Thought I'd get the weird one out of the way first. In my humble (and apparently aberrant) opinion, everything tastes better when it's cooked. Except cherry tomatoes, as evidenced by the photo. I cook mushrooms and onion on my George Foreman grill for ten minutes, chucking on some sweetcorn and lettuce towards the end. Then I fold it up in a tortilla wrap and stick that on the grill too, so that it holds everything together and has a bit of a crunch to it (makes it easier to cut in half, too). Just try it. You'll love it.





Roll It Up

Tasty and portable, especially as wraps can come in different flavours (I recall Tesco doing garlic and herb, and sun-dried tomato). Slice up your veggies, in this case cucumber, red onion, sweet red pepper, cherry tomatoes, and lettuce, and then drizzle with a sauce -- I chose sweet chilli. 









Stuff It

I always find it a bit of a trial to find good pita breads: the white ones from Tesco are too floury whereas the Lidl brown ones are a bit too dry. Toasting them makes them expand, and then just fill them with your salad.









Sandwich It (Father-Style)
My father obliged my blog by rustling me up a sandwich with a fresh Tesco sub roll and tablespoons of Branston pickle. I'm sorry, but that stuff is delicious. You need to try a cucumber and pickle sandwich: just trust me on this. Made a bit of a mess, but s'all good.

Sandwich It (Go Fast Food)
I'm just gonna come out and admit it: I ate my Subway sandwich before I could get a pic of it and I'm too poor to spend a fiver on a sandwich just for the sake of taking a picture. So use your imagination to construct an Italian sub loaded with veggies (no veggie patty) with onion sauce.



Finally, I'll leave you with the message that sometimes I'm so self-conscious (or, you know, out of appropriate carbs) that I just have to bite the bullet and eat a regular salad. Bulk it up with some protein (falafel or butter beans are my favourites) and smother it in dressing. Incidentally my local health store, For Goodness Sake, are selling a zero calorie dressing, which I'm intrigued by. The dressing in the picture is a Tesco Finest that's really nice.

Enjoy the ambivalent British summer!