Back to Salad Lunches!

Back to salad lunches. What I have prepared for tomorrow would be salmon with a lemon zest and lettuce, carrots and capsicums with a honey mustard salad sauce.

What is the trick to making simple salad lunches that you can prepare easily and then bring to work? Based on my personal experience with preparing salad lunches (since January this year, and as and when possible), I have the following tips to share: 

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1. Always purchase your groceries the weekend before. When you have a week's worth of vegetables and lean meat sitting there in your fridge, you will be compelled to prepare your salad lunches so as not to waste the food that you have purchased. 
2. Keep to simple recipes. Initially, you may be inspired by the mouth-watering recipes that you have gleaned from the Internet. However, some of these recipes may require lots of effort. Your enthusiasm may wane quickly from the trouble taken to prepare. Hence, it is always easier to start with simpler recipes - which do not take too much effort to prepare. 
3. Remember your lean meats. If you are looking to build muscle and maintain mass, you will certainly require an adequate amount of protein intake. Chicken breasts are the classic lean muscle-building protein, and I usually stick to either chicken breasts or chicken thighs. 
4. Microwave is quick and good. There has been a lot of misunderstanding regarding microwaving foods. Hence, this relevant article by Harvard Medical School will prove a good read: 

"Some nutrients break down when they're exposed to heat, whether it is from a microwave or a regular oven. Vitamin C is perhaps the clearest example. But because microwave cooking times are shorter, cooking with a microwave does a better job of preserving vitamin C and other nutrients that break down when heated.
As far as vegetables go, cooking them in water robs them of some of their nutritional value because the nutrients leach out into the cooking water. For example, boiled broccoli loses glucosinolate, the sulfur-containing compound that may give the vegetable its cancer-fighting properties (as well as the taste that many find distinctive and some find disgusting). Is steaming vegetables better? In some respects, yes. For example, steamed broccoli holds on to more glucosinolate than boiled or fried broccoli.

The cooking method that best retains nutrients is one that cooks quickly, heats food for the shortest amount of time, and uses as little liquid as possible. Microwaving meets those criteria. Using the microwave with a small amount of water essentially steams food from the inside out. That keeps more vitamins and minerals than almost any other cooking method." (http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/microwave-cooking-and-nutrition: Microwave cooking and nutrition by Harvard Medical School)

Hence, if you are looking to start preparing your healthy salad lunches, I urge you to try! It's really not as difficult as it seems! 

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