How my spring of salads helped me eat more vegetables

I've failed dismally at being a "new year, new me" person. I set New Year's resolutions in January, thinking I'll follow through. Sadly, in week one, I'm still nursing the Ke Dezember hangovers and food comas. I lose momentum before I can even try. But January is not the only time of the year when you can make a change: you can switch things up any time you feel like it. So when my roommate, Matty, suggested we do a 28-day salad challenge in spring, I jumped at the opportunity. Without the new year pressure, I felt more motivated to stick with it and hoped that the 28 days would catalyse better eating overall.

Planning our spring of salads

The main reason I wanted to do this challenge was to incorporate more veggies into my diet. I'm by no means a salad dodger, but I do default to the same veggies (hello, spinach and spring onions). But a baby spinach side salad at dinner is not enough. Not only is it important to get a good variety, but adding more plants to your diet is also really good for your gut. I am in my thirties now and must think of these things. For Matty, who loves salads and veggies, this challenge was an opportunity to get out of her comfort zone and into a more creative place with her eating.

ALSO READ: Make these changes to improve your long-term gut health

Fortunately, both Matty and I are planners. My new appreciation of meal prep and bulk cooking has turned me into a proper planner and Matty loves a good spreadsheet. A shared Google doc was created and the spring of salads began. We looked at everything from the weather to what's in season. There was plenty of inspo from social media and TASTE's top-notch salad recipe collection.

Matty focused on salads and I did the accompanying proteins. I did panic a little at the start, because I thought that our meals would only consist of salad – but fortunately, this was not the case. We aimed to have exciting, varied salads that were inspiring and satisfying, and for the most part, we succeeded. But there were a few hiccups on the way.

Proof of our meticulous planning:

Note that the lists were much longer than shown below, and Matty added notes to the different salads we had.

CHECK OUT: Our salad recipe collection 

How it started

As with any new project, we were very enthusiastic at the beginning (I'm sure you can tell from our spreadsheet!). We made big salads for dinner and had leftovers for lunch the next day. We selected salads that were as different as possible so we wouldn't get bored. We tried recipes we never would have considered if it weren't for the challenge. We had leafy salads on warm days and roasted salads on chilly days (spring is not all sunshine, after all).

At dinner, we'd have spirited discussions about our meals. What worked, what isn't that great, how we would make things differently. I discovered that I really like French-style potato salad. Matty's favourite herb – rocket – betrayed her in a rocket salad we found on NYT Cooking (I think she got all rocket while I got a nice balance). Rocket will not be entering our house for a while. Both of us loved the dressing in Khanya Mzongwana's Bloody Mary salad. In fact, when I opened my Blood Mary salad jar in the office, more than one person commented on how good it smelled. This process helped us add new veggie regulars to our weekly shopping list.

Bloody Mary salad in a jar recipe.

Learning to improvise

Needless to say, we were buying a lot of veggies during this challenge. But we didn't use up all the ingredients in the recipes. This resulted in many half-empty bags of veggies and herbs. Since we were doing this challenge in September, we hadn't yet seen Khanya's fridge clean-up videos that were posted in October. She made a herby roast chicken complete with herb oil and her fridge-dive giardiniera. But a fridge clean-up was our strategy. We did it by improving salads with whatever ingredients were left in the fridge at the end of the week. One of these meals was a yummy bacon-and-broccoli pasta, which technically counts as a salad because we ate it cold... #PastaSalad!

Another area where we had to get creative was with ingredients. As much as we checked what was in season, we couldn't find some key ingredients. We used our collective knowledge of food and flavours (and Google) to come up with good substitutes. Sadly there were some salads we had to scrap completely. I was determined to try Kate Wilson's cheat’s burrata and blood orange salad. But we couldn't find burrata anywhere and we missed blood orange season by two days! Fortunately, there were salads we loved so much, we didn't mind having them twice.

Cheat’s burrata and blood orange salad recipe

The flu that almost veered us off track

After two weeks of going strong, Matty was struck down with a cold. Part of us wanted to power through and keep on the salad train. Veggies are healthy after all, and since the weather was colder we'd be in our roasted salad era. But no matter how motivated you are, when you're sick, you need comfort food. So I made soup. I did load it with veggies since the whole point of this challenge was to eat more of them. I also think that soups and salads are in the same WhatsApp group, so I didn't feel too bad going in this direction. But there were one or two nights where takeaways were bought  👀. Like I said, you need comfort food when you're sick!

ALSO READ: How making tomato chutney for a year taught me to cook

This break in our challenge had the potential to derail us completely. We just weren't as excited to make the salads anymore. Fortunately, Woolies was there to save the day. They have such a great range of salads, which we leaned on when we were lazy. Khanya's Caesar chicken schnitzel recipe is the perfect crossover of convenience and at-home prep. Almost every part of this recipe, down to the dressing, made use of convenience products. But putting it together still feels like you achieved something. And it's delicious!

Caesar chicken schnitzel recipe

Another thing that got us back on track was social media recipes – and (healthy!) fads. At the time, everyone was eating a whole cucumber, so we had to eat one too. Matty made the viral spiral Asian cucumber salad that was popular a few years ago and it was so good. We also made the viral dumpling salad, which wasn't bad. But I prefer my dumplings the old-fashioned way. Now I know.

ALSO READ: Social media made me do it: how “FoodTok” influenced my cooking

How it ended

While we set out for 28 days of salads, in the end, we only managed 20 days. But that is still impressive, so IMO, the spring of salads was a success! This is especially true because two months later, we're still buying more veggies than before. These days, we're adding them to smoothies in addition to making good salads. Now there's more than just spinach and spring onions in my fridge, and I've learnt to appreciate salads more.

Broccoli and sugar snap salad recipe