Make eating salad as simple as can be with these salad ideas and easy salad recipes for every day of the week. Salad meal prep has never been so easy!
Love these salad recipes? Check out the eBook for How To Eat A Salad Every Day for more fantastic salad ideas, dressings, and tips to simplify your salad making!
With this eBook, if you’re grocery shopping, meal planning, or just trying to eat more salads, you’ll have this information at your fingertips whenever you need it.
“How To Eat Salad Every Day And Like It!” could also be called “My FAVORITE Salads {a.k.a. the Fritos Every Day Diet}.”
This salad meal prep post was first published three years ago and almost immediately it became one of the most popular posts on this site. I’m updating the post today to answer some of the more frequently asked questions.
Many of you have commented on my daily salads that I share on Instagram, and you asked for a post sharing tips for making the daily salad happen.
Salad Ideas
Today I’m sharing all of my favorite salad meal prep tips: the recipes, the toppings, the fillings, and more in one giant blog post. I promise you now, that if you give it a try, this just might rock your salad-eating world.
I made you this video to show how I do this. Be sure to check it out! There are endless salad ideas and so many delicious ways to keep things interesting when you’re prepping salads.
While I’d like to say that I’ve always been a fan of salad, that hasn’t always been true.
Salad Topping Ideas
I’ve always tried to love eating salad, but unless I went to the trouble of making a really great salad (something that often felt like a whole lot of effort in the past), it was hard to get excited about eating a salad most days.
That all changed when I topped my salad with a handful of Fritos for the first time. I know, that sounds completely ridiculous, but I’m telling you now that Fritos are a salad game changer.
Not only does that simple corn chip add great salty flavor and crunch to any salad, the Frito fits perfectly on a fork, it is bite-size, and it’s a fun way to tell all the greens that there is more to the salad life than just vegetables.
Roasted sweet potatoes and Brussels sprouts are pure awesomeness from start to finish. Adding salty bacon and a splash of vinegar makes this one heck of a fantastic side dish.
I served these Brussel sprouts and sweet potatoes with balsamic glazed meatloaf (a family favorite!) and this easy creamed corn. The whole family loved this meal!
If I’m lucky enough to have any of this recipe remaining after a meal, I very happily call it my lunch the following day.
I’m always in favor of using as much fresh produce as possible for pretty much every meal. Sweet potatoes are a favorite with my family and we use them in as many recipes as possible.
Roasted sweet potatoes are my middle son’s favorite potatoes. I frequently use sweet potatoes in breakfast skillets. Topped with an egg, that’s a savory breakfast that always makes me smile.
Last but not least, these Vanilla Bean Whipped Sweet Potatoes have been Sean’s favorite Thanksgiving dish ever since we were dating. (With no added sugars and just the sweetness of the potatoes, Sean chooses a second serving of these potatoes over dessert most of the time.)
Read more
Crisp baby spinach, spring mix lettuces, tart apples, sweet raisins, crunchy almonds, and the ultimate honey cider salad dressing are combined to create a fantastic Spinach Apple Salad.
I made this salad three times within a month the first time I made it. And in the years since then, this salad has made frequent appearances in my home.
Spinach Apple Salad
The Honey Cider Dressing is wonderfully tangy and sweet and the combination of those flavors with the rest of the Spinach Apple Salad immediately made this one of my all-time favorite salads.
And that says something because this parsley salad with oranges and the apple walnut salad with blueberries are big favorites too. There’s just something unforgettable about a fresh salad filled with fruits and tossed in a tangy sweet dressing.
I was determined to serve this with my Thanksgiving dinner a few years ago. So, I played with several different ways to make the salad in advance and still keep the apples fresh.
(Like most people I know, making as many of the Thanksgiving dishes as possible in advance keeps me the happiest!)
Everything I tried initially, changed the flavor of the salad too much. Fortunately, apple cider vinegar did the trick and after 36 hours in the fridge, the salad still had apples that were crisp, white, and tasting like fresh apples.
Honey Apple Cider Vine
Turkey pot pie is all the comfort you could imagine bundled in the most perfectly golden crust. It is creamy, full of veggies and perfect for leftover turkey.
Our chicken pot pie was one of our biggest posts last year. We had so many emails around Thanksgiving about using leftover turkey instead of chicken that we decided a turkey pot pie needed it’s own place on the blog.
We are making everything from scratch. From the flaky crust to the turkey and vegetable filling, it’s all homemade and we are going to walk you through each step.
It took me a while to figure out the perfect crust for a savory pie that was hardy enough to hold up under the filling but still fall apart flaky delicious. Once I figured that out and the consistency of the filling, the best pot recipe ever came to be. Now we are doing a turkey version and you’re going to love it!
Ingredients for Turkey Pot Pie
The ingredients list for this recipe might look long at first glance, but you will probably have most them on hand already. Make a stop in the produce section and grab a few fresh veggies and herbs, and you’ll be all set! And don’t forget the turkey! I love to use the leftovers from our oven roasted turkey, but you could use whatever cooked turkey you like best.
Here is your ingredient list:
Crust
- Flour
- Butter
- Salt
- Sugar
- Ice Water
Filling
- Turkey
- Carrots
- Corn
- Peas
- Onion
- Mushrooms
- Celery
- Garlic
- Savory
- Flour
- Salt
- Pepper
- Nutmeg
- Thyme
- Chicken Broth
- Whole Milk
Egg Wash
The measurements for each ingredient can be found in the recipe card below.
Corn Pudding is beloved throughout my family. I grew up eating my mom’s corn pudding for every holiday and plenty of Sunday dinners in between.
My siblings and I have been known to sneak the leftover corn casserole out of my mom’s house and I’ll even admit to “accidentally” bringing home my sister’s share of the leftovers (along with mine) once upon a time.
Corn pudding is a nostalgic dish for me, for sure, as perhaps it is for you. But if you’ve never tried it before, or if it’s been a few years, I know you’ll be as pleased with this side dish as I am.
Corn Pudding
Corn pudding is especially popular in the American south. It’s become widely eaten all over the United States not only because it’s delicious but because of how easy and inexpensive it (or “puddin’ corn” as it’s sometimes called in the south) is to make!
This is not a pudding in the dessert sense, although it is sweet. Corn pudding is more like a cross between a savory custard and a dish of warm creamed corn.
My favorite way to serve corn pudding is with turkey, chicken, or ham, along with green beans, and boiled baby potatoes.
Corn Pudding Casserole
My mom’s classic recipe includes a box of cornbread mix, as does just about every other corn casserole recipe I’ve seen. I started playing with the recipe, determined to come up with a version that didn’t require that boxed mix.
Jiffy Corn Pudding Casserole
This simple side dish is rich, creamy, sweet corn deliciousness that is unforgettable. My kids begged for seconds and would have happily eaten even more.
Even though I didn’t reach for the prepackaged box of Jiffy cornbread mix, this corn pudding tasted just as good as my mom’s. In fact, to be honest, I think it tastes even better.
If you haven’t tasted it before, you might be cringing at the thought of combining corn with anything and then calling it pudding, but I’m telling you that it works. Not one person I have ever served this to has failed to love it.