Quick and Easy Mexican Salad for Dinner

Sometimes I am not really in the mood to cook. That was my mood yesterday. While I love to cook I am not always in the mood to spend a lot of time in the kitchen every day. However I still wanted to feed us something nutritious. I had a few ideas for dinner but in the end I decided on salad. This meal came together in under 10 minutes from things I had in the refrigerator. Here is what we had for dinner last night:

Mexican Inspired Salad
Serves 2

Ingredients:

1 head of romaine
1 cup red cabbage, finely shredded
1 cup salsa
1 avocado
2 ounces broccoli sprouts
1 tomato
2 tablespoons cashew crème fraiche

Directions:

Nothing much to say here, LOL. Use the romaine as a base and build from there. I think we all know how to make salad. ;-)

Nutritional Information:

Amount Per Serving
Calories - 277.46
Calories From Fat (50%) - 139.3

Total Fat - 16.62g
Saturated Fat - 2.38g
Cholesterol - 0mg
Sodium - 830.67mg
Potassium - 1714.37mg
Total Carbohydrates - 30.2g
Fiber - 16.49g
Sugar - 8.23g
Protein - 9.83g

Comments:

This is a variation of a salad that I make when I run out of inspiration. I really enjoy salads dressed with salsa. I find that salsa is a great alternative to standard salad dressing. If you haven’t tried salsa on salad I highly recommend it. Adding a dollop of cashew crème fraiche really helps this to feel more like a taco salad only without chips. ;-) Cabbage was added to this salad since I used to use it on tacos. Of course I like nutrition cabbage adds to the salad.

Each serving of this salad contains approximately 18,700IU of vitamin A, 100mg of vitamin C, 170mg of calcium, 4.7mg of iron, 3.7mg of vitamin E, 0.7mg of B6, 530mcg of folate, 345mcg of vitamin K, 215mg of phosphorus, and 105mg of magnesium. Stats like this are the reason we eat so many salads. Consuming a lot of salad makes getting your vitamins from food much easier.

Breast Cancer and Fish Oil:

While catching up on my nutrition and health reading I came across this interesting article about women that regularly take fish oil. According to the VITAL study women who take fish oil supplements have a 32% risk reduction of breast cancer. The authors do caution that this was one study and fish oil should not be promoted as reducing breast cancer.

I think this is another example of omega 3 fatty acids reducing inflammation and that having an impact on overall cancer risk reduction. I will continue to focus on consuming healthy food containing omega 3 fatty acids like: flaxseeds, hempseeds, chia seeds and walnuts and reducing our consumption of omega 6 fatty acids. For me there is no down side to these dietary practices.

Unrelated note:

Guess who claimed he hadn’t enough calories yesterday and “needed” strawberry, banana and goji soft serve? Yes it was Dan, of course. He would live on that if I would let him. ;-) 

I need to run for now. I will be back later with an update.  With today being Monday I have a few more things on my to-do list.  Talk to you later.