Since April is over, I am not going to post every day – it was a great challenge for me though. But I felt that I had to write this post soon after my yesterday’s one to show how I am using the vegetables I mentioned in the Lensbaby Blog Circle post.

While visiting grandparents in Colorado a month ago, my father-in-law introduced us to a great salad mix he constantly makes. We learned the recipe, and have been creating this salad base since then. I call it a salad base, because we love adding additional items to it after it’s plated. But the base itself only contains vegetables that are “dry”, therefore the mix keeps for days in the fridge in a Ziploc bag.

I am not going to tell you measurements, because I don’t measure anything out for this salad. Use more of what you like and less of what you don’t like as much. Here are the ingredients I used today:

• kale
• red cabbage
• green cabbage
• broccoli
• cauliflower
• green onions (or red onions)
• shredded carrots
• radishes

In addition to these, when I think ahead of making the salad, I also buy parsnips and snap peas, and if you like celery, you could also add that. All you need to do is chop or grate everything into small pieces, and mix them together. Then you keep this mix in the fridge and use it whenever you crave a salad. It keeps for 4-5 days.

When you are ready to eat the salad, you can just add your favorite salad dressing to it, or add items that would not keep well in the basic mix. Today I added the following to mine:

• Red and yellow peppers
• the curly lettuce I took pictures of yesterday
• peppitos (sunflower seeds)
• cashews

You could also add

• tomatoes
• cucumber
• avocado
• olives
• berries
• your favorite meat cooked/grilled cubed
• and anything else you like.

If you stay away from starchy vegetables, this is going to be a pretty low-carb meal. Bon Appetite!

I used my Nikon 50mm lens with the +4 macro filter to create the above images.