Making the Most of the Salad Bar

So, college food is not great.  Correction, it is downright awful.  But there are often a few gleaming rays of hope within that sea of greasy pizza slices and overcooked pasta (a travesty...but I'll rant about that another time).  Case in point, the salad bar.

At my school, the salad bar is quite excellent.  There's a great variety of stuff that you can load up on, and this could either be a nutritional dream or a calorie-loaded nightmare.

I don't purport to be some sort of nutritionist.  I'm studying journalism, for crying out loud! But I do know, more or less, what is healthy and what most certainly is not.

As a rule, I try to get about four different colors on my plate.  Yes, colors.  I'll generally go with the Mesclun greens.  Why?  The Romaine is boring, and the spinach is a little on the bitter side for me.  Just with that, I've already got some green and purple foods.  I add on green peas and edamame (apparently I like green stuff...that's good, right?).  I also toss in a scoop of high-fiber, high-protein garbanzo beans (chickpeas).  I also have really come to like beets on my salad.  At our school's salad bar, the beets are served as slices.  Depending on how big the slices are, I'll go with three or four.

Carrots are my next addition.  My aunt would cringe; she doesn't like them.  But I do, and they're all loaded with beta carotene and vitamins and stuff.  Then comes the fun part: the little additive things.  I try to limit this, because this is the area where you can usually find the most unnecessary calories.

I always sprinkle some sunflower seeds on my lettuce.  These are fairly benign as long as they aren't salted.  I don't think they are at my school.  They're chock-full of healthy fats.  Today I added in a scoop of dried cranberries.  And I may continue to do that.  It was pretty tasty.

My dressing of choice is balsamic vinaigrette.  It is fairly neutral, in that it goes with pretty much all the stuff I add in.

I've started venturing out on a limb a bit.  Today, there was a cold salad of roasted potatoes, roasted red peppers and basil.  And another day I decided I would add some button mushrooms (apparently there were tasty roasted ones, but I opted for the raw sliced version...clearly an oversight).  But with a nutrition-dense core blend of vegetation, a little bit of potato salad won't hurt me at all.

Dr. Oz and many others have said that the key to healthy eating is to eat the rainbow...let's see how we've done: Green (lettuce, peas, edamame), Purple (lettuce), Red (beets, cranberries), Orange (carrots), and Tan (chickpeas).  I'd say a job well done.

~AF

AF's Basic Salad Bar Blend (all measurements are approximate):

1 c. Mesclun greens

1/4 c. green peas

1/4 c. raw edamame (soybeans)

1/4 c. chickpeas (garbanzo beans)

1/4 c. shredded carrots

3 or 4 beet slices, depending on size

1 Tsp. roasted sunflower seeds

1 Tsp. dried cranberries

1 or 2 Tsp. balsamic vinaigrette