Summer always has something delightful even though it is the most stressful and tiring season of the year. People are indeed very concerned about their diet and nutrition. Most of us don’t prefer a heavy diet and just maintain a simple salad diet throughout the span of this season. Many people aim to lose weight during this season by following a vegetable or fruit diet via summer salads, apart from working out in gyms and exercise centres. Basically this season brings in lots of lip smacking tastes.
Vegetables in salads are a good source of insoluble fiber that keeps our digestive track healthy. Men should get 38 grams and women need 25 grams of fiber in their daily diet. Salads make our diet a nutrient rich meal. The green salads alone are calcium, iron, potassium and B vitamin-rich. Moreover these salads are full of antioxidants as well. Salads are delicious, fresh fruits and vegetables are delicious too. So mixing all of them in an array of different tastes and combinations makes our meal more interesting.
It’s actually an unknown fact to most of us that food is initially eaten by our eyes and later it reaches our tastebuds. Similarly salads have varied textures, shapes, size and colours that makes our meal more bright and yummy. One should try and taste something new everyday. A salad doesn’t consist of just lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers. We can actually try out thousands of ingredients and combinations which do not look and taste boring at all.
One can even decrease the calories in their diet, unless and until we don’t add a bunch of fried vegetables or ingredients to our daily meal. Coming to salads, we can categorise them in to two different types, namely fruit salads and vegetable salads. So here comes a minute list of sweet and tangy salads that can make our diets more yummy and mouthwatering everyday.
Fruit salads are always preferred by the ones who are health conscious yet crave something sweet. So here we have different types of fruit salads.
The kiwi fruit salad is an amazing and a distinct type of salad we’ve ever come across. The ingredients here are as follows: one third cup of orange juice, one third cup of lemon juice, honey, two cups of fresh pineapple, grapes, strawberries, 3 kiwi fruit finely peeled and sliced, three bananas sliced and one teaspoon of vanilla extract. All you have to do for this is just bring orange juice, lemon juice and honey to boil in a sauce pan over medium flame, simmer until it’s slightly thick, stir in vanilla extract and let it cool. Later add all the fruits in one big bowl and pour the cooled sauce over the fruits. Cover and refrigerate for 3-4 hours before serving.
The most genuine and our all time favourite fruit salad is paired with a healthy gelato or frozen yogurt. All you need is the fruit of your choice like apple, grapes, mango, black grapes etc. Cut the fruits into small cubes or slices, mix all the fruits in a medium sized bowl and top it with your favourite ice-cream or yogurt.
This one is a combination of mixed vegetable, fruits & dry fruit salad. The ingredients are milk, carrots, apple, grapes and bananas, one can also add tomato (if they wish to to do so) roasted cashew nuts, and almonds. Grate the carrots and put the grated carrot in a bowl, cut apple and banana into fine cubes and slices and add it to the grated carrot, add grapes. Boil milk in a small beaker at a low flame and after it gets heated slightly add the milk to the bowl full of fruits. Dry roast cashewnuts and add it to the fruit bowl. Mix all the contents and cool it for 2 hours before serving.
For a watermelon cucumber salad, take cucumber and slice them. Take a piece of water melon and cut it in to fine cubes. Take a bowl & add olive oil, watermelon and sliced cucumber to the bowl. Add a pinch of salt, mix up all the contents and get ready to eat.
Now here we have some healthy vegetable salads.
For the sprouts vegetable salad, the ingredients are boiled sprouts, olive oil, salt, pepper,tomatoes, onions, lettuce (add all the above ingredients according to your requirement). Sprouts should be boiled initially and kept aside. Cut two onions, two tomatoes and lettuce and put all these vegetables in a bowl. Add sprouts to the contents, add olive oil, salt and pepper, mix it thoroughly and the salad is ready.
For the carrot salad, ingredients required are grated carrots, raisins, almonds. Grate the carrots in a bowl, add almonds and raisins to it (one can garnish it with milkmaid or yogurt if they want). It might look dry but its light on stomach and refreshing too.
For the french beans salad, ingredients required are tomatoes, onions, French beans, olive oil, pepper, salt, ( chat masala if required). Boil the French beans and put it in a separate beaker, add olive oil, salt and pepper and chat masala if necessary. Mix all the contents and cook it on a low flame for 10 minutes. Place the contents in a separate bowl, cut the tomato and onion and then add it to the cooked content and serve.
For the cheese tomato salad, ingredients required are tomatoes, grated cheese, pepper, black salt. Cut tomatoes into thin slices, add mozzarella cheese, pepper and black salt. Mix up all the contents and serve.
So enjoy a good salad meal this summer and let us know your favourite recipe.
Discussion about this post