Salads for Days

Literally.

With the stress of midterms, I did not have time to make anything else for myself besides salads.
But because I got a lovely free bottle of this yummy raspberry vinaigrette from Safeway, this made me feel not as bad about being so lazy and just making salad. Because this vinaigrette is going to have to be used up sometime, right? It was free for crying out loud! And wasting is wrong...that too. I just need to make sure this doesn't lead into me only making salads every day out of pure convenience and laziness. Which is already a tempting idea......bah! No! Must. Keep. Cooking. Real. Foods!

So I've been putting together spinach+carrots+grapes. Which really, (real talk) is just a lazy college kid's combination of random vegetables, covering it in vinaigrette, and calling it a day. But I ain't even sorry. And hey, it's really healthy at least! 

The grapes was my own creative spin, though. I figured that since my vinaigrette is fruit based anyway, that the grapes would be a nice touch to the salad. They basically substituted for crutons, since they're nice and crunchy as well. But they're so much healthier! So I was feeling pretty pleased with myself.

I also made another version where I melted some frozen rasberries and added those into the salad. This is when I ran out of grapes. The only problem with this though is that rasberries get really mushy, especially when you are defrosting frozen ones. But the juice kind of added to the salad I guess. Mine just got overly juicy. While I prefer grapes to the rasberries, I do like their addition into the salad, just so my salad isn't literally only two ingredients.

Difficulty: 1
Willingness to make again: 10 (works really well when I am feeling the need to be super healthy, or I am just very time-crunched)
Over-all: 6
Notes:
1. This is going to be my go-to detox food.
2. Maybe I will invest in buying some pumpkin seeds. Those are really good in salads!
3. And raisins...I miss raisins. I should buy raisins. RAISINS.

I know that I can definitely be more creative with salad. But my thing about making salads at home is that, while it is so easy and probably way cheaper than eating them at restaurants, I hate how many ingredients a TRULY AMAZING salad requires. I haven't invested into purchasing all those ingredients yet, even though I am sure it is more cost efficient than buying them at restaurants. It's another one of those "stubborn Jennifer things" that I will probably get over one of these days, and then shoot myself in the foot for not having done so sooner. Ah yes...but until then, I'll either be eating grossly simplified (but still edible and pretty good!) homemade salads or buying them.

 Salads are a lot messier to cook than you would think too (but I think this is just...a Jennifer problem). I HATE mixing salads. But I also HATE having under-mixed salads. Salad requires thorough mixing, but every time I try to do that I am spilling oils and ingredients all over the sides and it drives me NUTS. Blarg. I am kind of embarrassed to even be admitting that I have these problems because I have a feeling I am literally the only person in the universe who has this issue with making salads. Oops.