1. Greens Choose dark leafy greens as a base for a salad, spinach, watercress or romaine for example will add great flavour to a salad as well as being nutritious.

2. Nuts Add nuts or seeds to a salad to add protein and fibre. Walnuts, almonds, pecans, sunflower or pumpkin seeds all make great additions to a salad. Nuts and seeds can be high in calories but the fat they contain is the good fat our bodies need, so a handful as a topping to add some extra crunch to your salad is a great idea.

3. Fresh fruit A fruit salad is a great dessert, but why not add some fruit to your other salads too? Apple, pear, grapes, melon and mango all make great additions to a salad. Fresh fruit adds fibre and vitamins, is less carolific than dried fruit and well, fresh fruit just tastes great!

halthy eating

4. Protein Veggies taste great but they are not packed with protein, so to make a more rounded salad add some protein in the form of boiled egg, grilled chicken or salmon. Bacon bits are I know, God’s gift to the salad bowl, but they are not lean, oh go on then – just a sprinkle

5. Avocado You may be surprised at #5 as avocado is high in calories, but it is also packed with oleic acid, a healthy fat that may help lower cholesterol. Avocados are also high in potassium, vitamin K, and fiber. Try adding a few slices of this creamy textured fruit to your salad for something a little different.

It is quite shocking, to me anyway, that people buy prepared salads. Salads are so easy and quick to make and they certainly do not need to be packed with calories and fat. Yes, you can make an indulgent salad but you can also make a healthy, low calorie, delicious salad in no time at all, and at a fraction of the cost.

“It is a good idea to try making salads yourself because this is the best way of knowing exactly what is in them.”

I couldn’t agree more with Nathalie Winn if I tried!

What I am really surprised about is that there are sooo many calories in one of McD’s cardboard big mac burgers, WOW who knew that about cardboard

Major Joseph Tilden was in his time one of the most famous Bohemians and epicureans of the Pacific Coast. Ever since his death his many friends have been trying to learn the culinary secrets which made a repast of his devising so delicious. He had given his recipes to but few, and those few his most intimate friends and fellow spirits. One of the most favored of his old companions has given this complete collection of his recipes for publication.

San Francisco, May, 1907.

Boil separately two carrots, two turnips, and four potatoes. When cold, cut the vegetables into dice and mix them together, adding three apples peeled and cut into small bits. Toss in a large salad bowl with several olives for garnish. Bits of celery or cold cauliflower may be added. Pour over all a mayonnaise, or if preferred, a French dressing.

Another dressing that is excellent with this salad is one made of the yolks of four raw eggs beaten into half a glass of rich cream which may be either sweet or sour. To this add one teaspoonful of salt, one of mustard and a wineglassful of vinegar, blending carefully.

If you try this recipe, as I will be doing, please let us know and maybe share a photo

It’s easy to use and will be updated as we go along with new salads. The map has three types of markers….

You can click on the markers to reveal details of the salad or salad dressing from that location. If you see a number, right now only the number 2 shows, it means that there is more than one salad in that location. Click on the number and the markers will be revealed.

You can click on and drag the map around to view other locations, but if you scroll over the map it tends to go a bit funky! so use your scroll bar

The map is best viewed using Firefox, if you are still using internet explorer ….. Why?

To go to the map click on Killer Salads from around the World

If there are any salads that you think should be added to the map please leave a comment and let us know.

Have fun!

The new ration packs are designed to keep morale and energy levels up, and to combat the menu fatigue Prince Harry spoke about after serving in Afghanistan last year. With meals like Sweet Salmon Pasta, and Mixed Bean Salad, both included in the new menus, I think they are onto a winner.

Unfortunately not in the ration packs is the superbly named ‘Maverick’ Mozzarella & ‘Tom Cat’ Tomato Salad, which could be the best named salad I have come across, and I will definitely be making it in the near future. I saw the recipe on NAVYCS who featured a menu designed for Valentine’s Day by Corporals Richie Carter and Shirley Broderick of the RAF. The whole menu sounds great and it even includes a couple of cocktails. Now, if you want to learn how to make cocktails but don’t fancy joining the RAF you could always try a bartending school

Obviously I would be interested to know what the ration pack pasta salads taste like, so if anyone knows please let me know!

What they did was shred and finely chop some lovely greens and chuck em in a big jar of olive oil. The ceramic jar would shield the oil from the sun and any staleness would be masked by the fragrant herbs. In return, the oil would keep the herbs from wilting down to nothing and losing all their flavour and aroma.

As you may have guessed, a jar like that would practically have been worth its weight in gold on a long ocean journey. Imagine having to eat mouldy bread or ship’s biscuits every single day without something nice to dip it into! Heck, you could even make a seaweed salad taste yummy with some good flavoured oil.

No wonder then that the jar found in this 2400-year-old shipwreck was almost empty. The amphora containing the salad dressing was found together with one holding some sort of Retsina. Alas, the bucket of seaweed that would have gone with all that was sadly lost — as was the recipe.

Note: scientists are reported to be extracting DNA from the jars’ contents. As soon as they come up with the full recipe of the dressing, we will let you know a.s.a.p.

Hat tip to earlpearl for the heads-up.

Thanet Earth is located at the Isle of Thanet in Kent, and is being built by the Fresca Group, the UK’s largest fresh produce supplier, and a consortium of Dutch growers at a cost of 80 million pounds. Their aim is to fulfill the desire for homegrown fresh produce all year round, reducing the need for imports by 15%.

Thanet Earth say they will produce a staggering 2.5 million tomatoes per week for 52 weeks a year, and in the weeks between February and October, 560,000 peppers and 700,000 cucumbers will be harvested weekly. That’s pretty impressive.

Also impressive are the growing methods employed, computers will control every aspect of the growing conditions including lighting, nutrients and water. The water will come from reservoirs being built on site, pumped directly into the greenhouses and warmed along the way, how neat is that?. This really is the agricultural equivalent to the factory production line.

The real test however is the quality of produce Thanet Earth will deliver, will hydroponic salads taste as good as their soil grown counterparts? I’m looking forward to finding out.

You can see pictures of Thanet Earth here

“I had a ploughman’s lunch the other day; he wasn’t very pleased about it” Tommy Cooper

A Ploughman’s Lunch is an icon of English cuisine. You could randomly pick any English pub to have lunch in, and chances are you will find a Ploughman’s Lunch on the menu. On a warm summer afternoon a Ploughman’s Lunch and a cold beer is the stuff of dreams.

Now, you may be thinking ploughmen have been around for a long long time, they have, and I expect they took a cold lunch with them when they went into the fields. But the Ploughman’s Lunch as we know it today was invented in the 1960′s by marketing men who wanted to promote cheese. It has to be said, they did a great job, the Ploughman’s Lunch was and still is a popular choice for lunch, and it definitely fits the description of a Killer Salad.

The Ploughman’s Lunch may vary from pub to pub, but there are four ingredients that are required and if they are not present then it’s not a Ploughman’s. These four ingredients are cheese, crusty bread, butter and pickles, they are non negotiable.

Other ingredients are usually added alongside the main four, the most common being a selection of salad leaves. Others include pate, sliced hard boiled egg and pork pie. There are no hard and fast rules about what you can add, just don’t remove the cheese, crusty bread, butter and pickles.

The cheese should be cheddar, a large wedge of cheddar. Sometimes you will find Stilton or Brie, or maybe a selection of all three but cheddar is the best in my humble opinion.

The crusty bread can be white or brown, but must be crusty. A slice of regular supermarket bread will not suffice, it should be a good quality thick chunk of crusty bread.

The butter should be served in a small dish on the side of the plate, and it should be butter. Margarine is not the same as butter and will not do.

The pickles can be either traditional pickled onions or a couple of spoonfuls of brown Branston sweet pickle, this is entirely your choice. I prefer the pickled onions but the sweet pickle is nice too.

Additional salad leaves should be fresh and crisp, I like to use a Cos lettuce or Romaine. I sometimes also add sliced tomato and cucumber, and have even been known to add some sliced ham.

You can see examples of Ploughman’s Lunches here

Now, here comes the BUT….

Some foodstuffs that I like to eat are not produced in the UK, I can’t imagine never eating a banana again, and a world without pineapple doesn’t bear thinking about it. There is also the issue of the growers in developing countries that depend on the export trade for their livelihoods.

I think it’s very commendable to think about food miles and the associated costs and long term damage to the enviroment, but we have to think about people too and the immediate impact that a reduction of trade would have on developing nations.

So, what is the solution? Well in simple terms we need to mix ‘n’ match. We should of course be supporting our local producers and eating fresh tasty food, and when we want something that isn’t grown in our native countries, or we want something out of season, e.g. Asparagus in December, we should be looking at fair trade produce, at least that way our food miles will be doing some good. To be honest I could actually survive without Asparagus in December, but bananas and pineapple – no way!

So, over the next few days / weeks I will be doing some research, finding my local producers, finding out exactly what is grown in my local area, finding out what is grown further afield, finding out what fair trade produce is available locally to buy. I’ll get back to you with what I find, and maybe some eco-friendly killer salads.

You will find in any marinade, an acidic ingredient such as vinegar, yogurt, wine, or lemon juice. This acidity softens the proteins in the meat, denatures it, makes the protein strands unwind so that the marinade can seep in and flavour the meat.

This unwinding process is relatively slow, but times vary for different meats. For instance poultry and fish rarely need more than half an hour. Other meats can take around 2 – 4 hours. But don’t make the mistake of adding too much marinade thinking it will give more flavour or work more quickly, you will just end up with a woolly coating and no extra flavour in the meat itself. A nice even, thin, layer of marinade will suffice, and give an excellent result.