Do It Yourself Lunch Salad Bowls

As a suburban homesteader, one of the things I am passionate about is living frugally. It has been so engrained in our daily life that sometimes we have to remind ourselves that is it okay to spend a little money on something we want. It can be very healthy to reward ourselves for making good choices with something a little decadent every now and then, but it can also be difficult to get into habits that facilitate a frugal lifestyle.

I would like to point out that being frugal is not being cheap. It is understanding the value of something, the value of time, the value of our health and the value of a product. Will I always buy the cheapest product available to save a few dollars? No, not necessarily. Sometimes spending a little extra to get a quality product that's going to last is much more financially responsible than saving a couple dollars now. But do we always need the newest, the biggest and the shiniest? If we leave to listen to our inner dialog and be honest with ourselves about our priorities, then the answer is usually no. Unfortunately, this perspective does not usually come naturally; it is a learned behavior.

Maybe we were lucky enough to learn frugal behavior from our parents. Maybe, but let's be honest, even if our parents were frugal, we probably didn't come to appreciate it until much later in life. The focus of one of my websites, Foot Steps to Frugal, is to introduce the concepts of frugal living. Not all of the steps are right for everyone's situation and it is a journey that we can take one step at a time; it is not merely the destination.

Homesteaders tend to embrace a frugal lifestyle, but you don't need to be a homesteader to incorporate the values of frugal living into your everyday lives. My personal approach to frugal focuses on balancing finances, time and health. Cutting too many corners financially can lead to poor product choices that are not healthy. Spending too much time preparing healthy food is not always possible for busy families with two wage earners. However, making small changes where you spend less money and spend a little more time to make healthy food choices for your family can be as easy as preparing your own convenience food.

Salads are a healthy food choice, but it can be difficult to convince your family that a daily salad for lunch will be satisfying. It is also a far more expensive alternative at most fast food chains making it a less financially viable option. So I have come up with a way to make salads that my family actually wants to eat. Yes, even my macho, meat and potatoes husband has been faithfully taking his daily salad to his manual labor job as a trash man. Did his co-workers have anything to say about it? Sure, there were a few snarky comments in the beginning, but they all admitted that with the added fixins' that the salads actually looked pretty tasty.

The key to accomplishing this is making it a meal instead of just a bowl of "chick food" as my husband refers to it. So, start to finish, here is my tutorial on how to make convenience salad bowl with cleverly disguised "chick food." Remember, variety is the spice of life. Variety makes things interesting. A bed of fresh lettuce is of course the foundation of most salads, but how you build it from there is what will keep their interest.

I start by choosing the vegetables that I want to use. This week I was able to get good quality celery, radishes, carrots and grape tomatoes at a reasonable price. The vegetables I use vary by season, but I always try to add at least 3 different vegetables to keep it interesting. Yes, I know tomatoes are a fruit, just play along. Use the freshest vegetable possible because these will be in the refrigerator for a couple days and nothing spoils a salad experience like a mushy brown vegetable.

I love my Mandolin slicers for quick veggie prep, but you can easily chop them by hand or give them a quick whirl in the food processor. Use whatever tools you have to save you time. It seems to go quicker if you have all your veggies prepared before you start to assemble.

This week I used Iceberg Lettuce. Admittedly, not the healthiest lettuce available, but my family loves it and it's still healthier than potato chips. When Romaine is reasonable or other varieties of lettuce or greens are in season, I use what is fresh and the best value. I will mix a few types of lettuces together if possible. As a quick reference, a standard head of Iceberg lettuce is enough for 4-5 adult salad bowls, for kids you might want to cut back the proportions.

The containers I like to use are Gladware. I like that they are clear so you can see what's in them and they wash and stack easily. Plus, the deeper bowls hold the salads and all the fixins'.

I have found through trial and error that one large handful of lettuce is just about the perfect serving for us.

This time 2 heads of lettuce got us 9 bowls.

Then we add the other vegetables.

Once all of the vegetables are assembled, it's time to get creative. For this round of salads, I decided on meat, cheese and onions. Other times I have done crunchy bacon bits and shredded cheese in one baggie and meat and onions in a separate baggie. Dry fixins' and wet fixins' should go in separate bags. Chopped onions will make bacon crunchies or croutons soggy. Cheese can usually go either way, so this round I just did one fixins' baggie. The sky's the limit on what you can add. At times I have used Avocado slices, sliced almonds, roasted soybeans, crunchy tortilla strips, croutons, crumbled feta, chick peas, roasted pumpkin seeds, hard boiled eggs, or sunflower seeds.

Change it up and use what you have or can purchase reasonably. It is easy to get into the rut of always making things the same, but that's where you potentially lose their interest. Nothing is worse than the same thing for lunch every day. "But what if I put something in there that they don't like, will they still eat it?" To this I say, "What if you put something in there that they try and find out that they DO like, then you have just broadened their palettes."

Next we consider the protein. There are many vegan or vegetarian options for proteins and if that is what your family likes, then great, but my family wants meat. While any meat (or non-meat) your family likes is fair game, leftovers can work great for this. I have used small strips of steak, roasted chicken and even seafood. However, I have found that one of the most economical solutions for a variety of meats is deli ends. A little known secret is that if you go to your deli guy and ask, many times they have deli scraps and ends that they will sell you cheap. There are usually chunks of turkey, roast beef, ham, salami, etc. Sure, fresh is better, but deli ends are an economical way to add protein to a salad and probably give them variety that they didn't already see the night before at dinner.

Last, but not least, is dressing. While I personally don't care if my salad has dressing, my family likes the added flavor. Disposable plastic snack cups are perfect for dressing portions. If you are like me, even though they are disposable, I frequently wash and reuse them But, if time is at a premium, at least they are recyclable. I won't generally try to use different dressings in each salad in a week, but I will try to change up dressings from week to week.

All that's left now is to fit everything in your bowls and pop the lids on.

I will frequently make enough bowls for everyone in my family enough to last for 3 or 4 days, but in general if you use fresh ingredients, they should last up to a week in the refrigerator.

So, I hope you enjoyed my little tutorial and got some ideas on how to add frugal living concepts to your daily life. Wishing you Time, Health and Money!