This salad is one of my favorite lunch or dinner meals. You can modify the salad to suit the vegetables you have in you refrigerator. You can supplement it with other foods to make it a 500-calorie lunch or a 600 to 700-calorie supper meal. You can vary the dressing.
I clean my lettuce of the outer leaves then I soak it in cold water in my salad spinner changing the water twice. Once I’m done extracting the water, I just store the lettuce in the spinner in the refrigerator. Yes, it takes a fair amount of room but I’ve managed to maneuver things around in order for the spinner to fit.
If I’m not in the mood for cleaning lettuce and other vegetables, I go to one of the local market salad bars and buy my ingredients. I put the lettuce, the vegetables, and the fruits into separate containers. I only buy enough for two days because that’s about as long as the ingredients stay fresh.
Connie’s All-Purpose Dinner Salad Recipe
| Ingredients | Calories |
| 2 cups lettuce, any kind | 14 |
| 1/2 medium carrot, grated | 16 |
| 1/3 English cucumber | 7 |
| 1/2 ripe tomato, cubed or sliced (or grape tomatoes) | 16 |
| 1 stalk celery, cut diagonally into chunks | 6 |
| 1 Tbsp. green onion thinly chopped | 4 |
| 2 radishes | 2 |
| Basic salad ingredient total: | 65 |
| Add-ons to make your salad super delicious | |
| 1/2 oz. Swiss cheese cut into small cubes | 55 |
| 2 oz. Morey’s Wild Alaskan Smoked Salmon, cubed | 80 |
| 3 slices Jones Canadian bacon cut into strips | 70 |
| 1 hard-boiled egg | 78 |
| 2 oz. Valley Fresh vacuum packed white meat chicken | 70 |
| 3 oz. large ready-to-eat shrimp (about 8 shrimp) | 60 |
| 2 oz. Chicken of the Sea premium Albacore Tuna | 60 |
| 1/4 avocado, sliced | 75 |
| Select 2 or 3 of the add-ons to total about 250 calories | 250 |
I don’t usually use avocado because it doesn’t keep well, and I don’t like to waste food. If you’re buying salad ingredients from a grocery market salad bar, pick out a few slices.
If I’m taking this salad with me for lunch at a park or on some other kind of outing, I put all the chopped or cut up ingredients on the bottom of my container and the lettuce on top. I carry the dressing in a separate container. When I’m ready to eat the salad, I add the dressing, then re-cover my container, shake it, uncover it and eat. The lettuce and dressing gets nicely distributed throughout the salad.
Here’s the calorie count on some popular dressings. As you can see, the calorie counts can be rather high. I try to use only two tablespoons of dressing to keep the calorie count of my meal down and yes, I do measure to be sure I’m only using two tablespoons:
| Dressing | Calories |
| 2 Tbsp. Marzetti Honey French | 170 |
| 2 Tbsp. Hidden Valley Honey & Bacon French | 150 |
| 2 Tbsp. Wishbone Chunky Blue Cheese | 150 |
| 2 Tbsp. Kraft Creamy Italian | 100 |
| 2 Tbsp. Sweet & Spicy French | 130 |
| 2 Tbsp. Kraft Organic Raspberry Vinaigrette | 40 |
| 20 sprays Wishbone Raspberry Bliss Spritzer | 20 |
| 20 sprays Wishbone Caesar Delight Spritzer | 30 |
| 2 Tbsp. Thuy’s homemade Vinegar & Oil - recipe below | 80 |
| 2 Tbsp. Classic homemade Vinegar & Oil - recipe below | 147 |
| 2 Tbsp. Newman’s Own Two Thousand Island Dressing | 140 |
| 2 Tbsp. Kraft Ranch dressing | 148 |
| 2 Tbsp. Citrus Vinaigrette - recipe below | 30 |
| Check out the low-calorie dressings available in your local market. |
I’m including two recipes for Vinegar and Oil dressing. As you can see, they are easy to make.
Thuý’s Vinegar and Oil Dressing
| Ingredients | Calories |
| 1/3 c. water | 0 |
| 1/3 c. extra virgin olive oil | 640 |
| 1/3 c. rice vinegar | 0 |
| 1 clove garlic, chopped | 4 |
| 1 tsp. each salt and pepper | 0 |
| Ingredient total: | 644 |
| 2 Tbsp. serving | 80 |
| Blend ingredients; store in refrigerator. | |
I usually put my salad dressing ingredients in a pint jar with a screw lid. I shake and store the dressing in the same jar.
Classic Vinegar - Oil Dressing
| Ingredients | Calories |
| 3 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil | 360 |
| 1 Tbsp. vinegar, preferably Balsamic | 3 |
| 1 clove garlic, crushed | 4 |
| Salt and pepper to taste | 0 |
| Ingredient total: | 367 |
| 2 Tbsp. serving | 147 |
| Whisk ingredients together. Toss with mixed greens or with raw or cooked vegetables. |
|
For a delicious taste treat with fewer calories than standard Vinegar-Oil dressing, try this Citrus Vinaigrette.
I was served a citrus vinaigrette similar to this one at the Nokomis Restaurant & Bar in Duluth, MN when I was traveling to Grand Marais to take a class at the North House Folk School. The field greens salad on which the citrus vinaigrette was served was artistically arranged and delicious. It was an option served with the incredibly delicious tenderloin sandwich I had for lunch. Everything I ate there was wonderful. I stopped for lunch again on my return trip from Grand Marais. I tried to duplicate the dressing here.
| Ingredients | Calories |
| 2 Tbsp. vinegar (rice is 0; champagne is 10 per Tbsp) | 0 |
| 1/2 c. fresh squeezed citrus fruit, grapefruit, lime, | |
| orange. Orange=55; lime=32; grapefruit=48 | 55 |
| 1/2 shallot, minced | 7 |
| 1 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil | 120 |
| Salt and pepper to taste | 0 |
| Ingredient total: | 182 |
| 2 Tbsp. serving | 30 |
| Whisk ingredients together. | |
There’s another very easy dressing you can make when your supply of salad dressings is down.
Mix together 3 Tbsp. of Kraft Miracle Whip Dressing (40 calories per Tbsp.; 120 calories = 3 Tbsp) and 1 Tbsp. Dole Pineapple-Orange juice (from your 6-oz can; 1 Tbsp. = 17 calories). Two tablespoons of this salad dressing is only 68-69 calories!
Speaking of Kraft, I get a FREE magazine from them called Food and Family. I love reading through their recipe ideas. The thing I like the best, beside the fact that it is free, is that the calorie count is given for each food in the recipe index in the back of the magazine.