June November: HOW TO BUILD A WORK SALAD

I take a lunch to work every single day, and a great salad is ALWAYS part of my weekly rotation, no matter what the season. There's lots of advice out there on how to build a brown bag lunch salad salad, but I always follow these three rules:

1. Dressing on the bottom of the container (day of ONLY).

2. Tons of greens

3. Three toppings, including at least one protein

Let's build a lunch!

Step 1:

I've made my own salad dressing for the past few years. This is a Raspberry Walnut Vinaigrette from the Whole 30 book, but most of the time I just use olive oil, a big squeeze of lemon, and salt and pepper.

Step 2:

For lunch salads, I buy the containers of pre-washed mixed greens to make it quick and easy in the mornings.

Step 3:

Topping 1: Grilled chicken from my meal prep.

Step 4:

Topping 2: Walnuts. I love using nuts in place of croutons.

Step 5:

Topping 3: Avocado. I keep the peel on and dice right inside. Then I place it face down on top of the salad, and it stays nice and green until lunch time. I just squeeze it out and toss it together!

I started cutting back on salad toppings after reading one of my all time favorite books: An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler. She actually thinks you should use only one, maybe two other ingredients when making a lettuce salad, so I'm cheating a bit here with all that protein.