Prepackaged convenience foods usually don’t do it for me, health-wise or cost-wise, but one open-and-serve item that is worth it’s (manager’s special – reduced) price is Organic Baby Spring Mix salad.
The ingredients: “May contain some or all of the following — baby red romaine, baby tango, baby arugula, baby red leaf, baby green romaine, baby lolla rosa, baby mizuna, baby tatsoi, baby green chard, baby red chard, baby red mustard, baby red oak, baby green oak, frisee, radicchio, baby green leaf, swiss chard, baby spinach and beet tops. All organic.”
I don’t know about you, but my garden isn’t big enough and I’m certainly not skilled enough to grow that many different types of organic “greens.” (I don’t even know which is which in the box!) When they’re marked down, I grab a couple and we are set for salads for a week.
Dressing up my greens as taco salad, fried chicken salad, steak salad, or loaded tostadas helps me pass off health food as fun food.
Low cost. Lots of vitamins and nutrients. Wide variety of lettuces we would otherwise not eat. What’s not to love?!
Do you buy prepackaged salad or grab the greens to make your own? Have any great salad recipes for me to try?
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Love this stuff! I grabbed 3 boxes last week when it was on Manager’s Special!
I swear by my salad spinner…but when this kind of thing is a good deal, I go for it and am so thankful for the easy fix! We love dried cherries, walnuts and balsamic vin. dressing. Taco seasoned chicken and salsa with canned kidney beans is a super easy, quick main dish salad.
I usually buy a head of romaine and red or green leaf. I also have a salad spinner that I found at a garage sale and love it. It makes washing greens very easy. But if I could of found that salad green mix on sale I would of bought up a few myself. I don’t do to much fancy things with greens. We like to eat a lot of Mexican and so instead of using iceberg I like to eat more nutritious greens. One meal we like is called Haystacks. You can find the recipe here http://brkostman.blogspot.com/2009/03/this-month-is-no-theme-month-meaning.html.
I usually pile on the greens with this dish. My 3 year old son has learned to eat greens with this dish. Thanks for the post!
I grow my own lettuce each year. You can buy a pack of mixed lettuce seeds, organic even. Lettuce doesn’t take up that much room in the garden and with the mixed pack you get the good variety like what you have in the container. I don’t know what they all are either, but I love growing it all. If we don’t have our own lettuce, I buy a 4 lb container at Sams club of organic spring mix for about $4. Very worth it for us. My kids even love salad and we eat the whole thing in a week.
I buy the bagged “manager’s special” salad as well. It’s just so much more convenient and what a price!
I’m not sure if we have that around here, probably not; we are pretty far out in the sticks. Anyways, we do a little of each. Sometimes we’ll by prepackaged, other times DH will cut everything up and make his own.
Ohh! I love that stuff too! The big containers of it are reg. $7 at our grocery store, so I only buy it when it’s on Managers Special for $3!
It is really yummy!
Yum! A salad sounds delicious right now! I will have to watch for those to be marked down in our store!
I had never grown lettuce before, and just tossed some (mixed lettuce) seeds in the garden several weeks ago. I now have more lettuce than I know what to do with. I blame it on the cool and wet weather, as well as the fact that we have all been sick over the last week or so and not wanting salad. But I still buy stuff from the store when its a great price like that.
Those salad blends are great, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen them discounted very much. I’ll keep looking.
I do both, and have plenty of greens coming up in the veggie garden for the summer.
I have recently been picking up the organic mixes of salad greens. Love the blend of greens, reds, etc.
Right now I’m growing lettuce in my garden, but normally, I buy salad mixes when they are on sale (instead of the different components and doing it myself).
If I can find prepackaged salad on sale I will purchase it. Usually I just make my own mix. I use just regular lettuce with shredded carrots and fresh snap peas and top it off with ham, cheese and croutons. I love salad. I could eat it with every dinner.