Salad Challenge Day 1

I am a creature of habit. I follow a highly regimented eating schedule, largely to avoid blood-sugar crashes and the nasty migraines and crankiness that accompany them. Any given work day, I eat at the following times:

· 6:30 a.m. – breakfast (usually toast with nut butter and a fruit smoothie)
· 7:30 a.m. – tea with honey
· 10 a.m. – coffee (black)
· 12:00 p.m. – lunch
· Between 3:30 and 4 p.m. – tea with honey
· Between 6 and 6:30 p.m. – dinner

Today has been a whole different story. I signed up for a wellness check this morning at 8 a.m., for which I had to fast two hours in advance. So, I packed up my smoothie, a slice of bread and my homemade cashew butter to eat afterward. However, the city got caught in a crazy storm, which caused a power outage at work starting at 7:45 a.m. Needless to say, my wellness screening was cancelled. I finally remembered that I could eat at 8:30, so I drank my smoothie and then smeared cashew butter on my untoasted bread. The power went on and off for a while, finally choosing the latter for a while around 10:30. We were all told to take an early lunch until noon. A coworker and I headed to Panera, where I drank a massive large coffee (black) and ate 3/4 of a whole grain bagel (plain, no cream cheese) at about 11 a.m. So when noon rolled around, I was definitely not ready for lunch, which meant I didn’t enjoy my first salad of the week until 2:30. Sheesh.

Anyway, here is my first entry into my Salad Challenge:

Nekkid. (tee hee!)

Dressed.

It’s going to be a crazy week, so I will admit that I did not make this salad. It is one of Whole Foods’ salad shakers. However, the ingredients are all-natural and fit the bill. The salad contains brown rice, edamame, carrots, mushrooms, cabbage, almonds and their no-oil carrot ginger dressing (carrots, mirin, agave, tamari, rice vinegar, mustard and ginger). The verdict: it’s tasty, though not particularly filling. I intended to serve it atop spinach I washed, spun and tore up previously, but they were pretty nasty by the time I got them out of the Ziploc. Given my particular non-love for spinach, it’s probably tastier without the greens, though the added iron and magnesium would have been nice. The dressing is great without oil; I love the ginger zing.

Here's some bonus salad pr0n:

OK, so there's really nothing salad-like about chicken salad. Mine is, of course, of the vegan variety. This post was apparently sponsored by Whole Foods.

(Not really. I paid for all of these items. Or rather, my love did, since it was his week to buy.)

Verdict on this one: tasty, though not life-altering. I'm not sure I've ever eaten actual chicken salad, so I have no basis for comparison. I will tell you that, last week, when my taste buds weren't working properly, nothing tasted as amazing as this sandwich. Today, I would not go that far, but I still enjoyed it.

Did you enjoy a nutritious salad today?