This week's salad-in-a-jar

M is on school holidays, so at the moment I only have to do lunches for my four days a week at work.  It's summer, and combining that with wanting to increase my servings of vegetables to something near to the five-a-day one is "supposed" to eat, I'm all about salad.  Once M is back at work I might switch out week by week with bentos, but I really do love doing a little bit of work on Sunday night and having lunch for four days ready to go.

The thing with mason jar salads is that if you get the layers right, there's little to no danger of soggy lettuce (hence making them on Sunday for the rest of the week. 

You start with your dressing: this week I went with sesame oil, garlic, chopped shallots, and a dash of white vinegar.

Add "hardy" vegetables; carrots, green beans, the vegetables that won't soak up the dressing too easily.

Then the less-hardy vegetables; for me this was capsicum and the left over summer squash salad (patty pan squash, zucchini and chopped up potato) that we'd had for dinner.  I was going to add snow peas, but decided that my little 360ml jar was looking full enough already.

Next is protein.  Last week I had chick peas - this week it was an Asian-style poached chicken, poached in water with mirin, soy sauce and sliced garlic.  I topped that with salmon flakes made using Makiko Itoh's recipe (this is one of my favourite things to do with leftover salmon.  In fact, I generally take off a chunk intentionally once I've cooked salmon, before serving.)

Then, fill the rest of the jar with lettuce, and you're good to go.

By my calculations, this counts as 2.5 to 3 servings of vegetables, and gives me a delicious, carb-free lunch that was relatively easy to make and used up leftovers!