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| Ready and eager to be packed in your lunch |
My mom and I always talk about how much we love when other people make salads for us, because washing, cutting, and prepping the ingredients is such a pain that it makes eating the salad suck. What I've discovered is that if you prepare your salad ingredients in bigger batches and have them on hand all the time, packing a salad doesn't feel like such a chore.
I used to hate Kale and talk a LOT of trash on people who loved it. Most of my animosity came from customers at the upscale specialty grocery store where I worked my senior year of high school. People would talk endlessly about the benefits of the leafy green and lament the fact that our old juicer couldn’t handle the tough stems. Constantly hearing about how great kale was made me hate it, like Taylor Swift. But really, I just hadn’t given kale a chance.
Kale is actually amazing. You can eat it in a salad, put it in a smoothie, roast it in the oven, sauté it on the stove, throw it in a soup, and even fry it up like a chip. Your fave could never! But plain kale salad always left me feeling kind of bloated and weird. Turns out the secret to kale salads is an oily massage 😉
You need:
• Kale
• Olive Oil
• Salt
• Lemon
• 1 head of Romaine
Start by throwing your greens in a big ziploc bag. I buy mine pre-cut and washed from Trader Joe’s for just $1.49 a bag, and the bag takes a while to go bad (unlike spinach). Drizzle just a tiny touch of olive oil into the bag. You’re not dressing the kale, it’s just a little massage lubricant, so don’t go crazy. Sprinkle in some salt, squeeze the juice from ¼ lemon and seal up the bag, pressing out any air.
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| In california it's now legal to have a gallon-sized ziploc bag of kale |
Now you just rub it! It’s that simple! Rub it so the kale relaxes a little and is evenly coated in the oil and lemon juice. “Coated” is a bad word to use since it’s such a small amount of oil, but you get what I’m saying.
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| Look how calm this kale is. Serene. |
Once your kale is nice and relaxed, wash, dry, and chop up a head of romaine. Kale and romaine are a match made in heaven. The restaurant where I work uses the mix for their delicious Caesar salads. I believe it’s California law that every restaurant MUST have a kale Caesar salad on the menu. The romaine balances the bitterness of the kale, but the kale provides nutrition that romaine is lacking, since romaine is mostly just water. Relationship goals!
When the romaine is dry and chopped, mix it in with the kale. Throw a dry paper towel in the bag to absorb any extra water, and your salad is ready for the next couple days. All you need to do is throw some toppings and dressing on top before you run out the door, making lunch packing a breeze.
It’s tough to tell how much these greens cost per-serving, but my best guess is about $0.60.