Sun Dried Tomato and Feta Chopped Salad

Just incase anyone is still following their “New Year, New You” 2016 resolution, I bring you this delicious and healthy Sun Dried Tomato and Feta Chopped Salad! This salad is loaded with flavor and perfect, perfect, perfect to throw in your lunch bag and take right along to work with you. This is EXACTLY what everyone needs to stay on the healthy eating bandwagon so that in 2017 we won’t need to make resolutions about being healthy, eating better, eating brighter.. yada, yada, yada. We will already have it down!

This is my new go-to salad because it is simple, easy, and with a little prep you can throw it together in a short amount of time (<5 minutes). Although I eat my lunch at home, I don’t always have a ton of time to put together food for myself, because hello! A new baby and 2 (sometimes 3) other children who cannot cook need Momma to feed them. All while making sure little bellies are full sometimes I forget about myself. In talking to my other Momma friends about food I’ve realized we are all kind of in the same boat here! We want to eat healthy and take care of our own bodies but we have wee little beings to take care of who take priority over our elaborate healthy food prep, cooking, and planning. And seriously, don’t even get me started on grocery shopping with kids because then I’d have to tell you about that time last week that I ABANDONED A CART at the grocery store because my 2 year old was having an epic meltdown! Talk about being totally horrified in public!

So to off-set my zero time and lack of ability to 1) grocery shop in general and 2) prepare elaborate meals, I have been prepping salad ingredients ahead of time (brown rice, chicken) so that I can throw them together quickly at lunch and enjoy something equally healthy and delicious. Enter this Sun Dried Tomato and Feta Chopped Salad!

If you’ve ever wondered why salads at the mall/restaurants taste better it is because they generally will mix everything together, including the dressing. It makes a world of difference to do this! I love to chop my romaine super thin, then throw all of my other ingredients in and mix it up into one beautiful dish of nutrition. Also, super serious studies (my own) have shown that people use less dressing when they do this which is a great way to make sure you are not pouring hundreds of calories worth of dressing onto your healthy salad. Making this simple mistake could potentially ruin your diet all together so dressing is something I ALWAYS measure, even when I use my own homemade dressings.

Speaking of dressings, on this particular day I did use a store bought dressing (GASP!!!) because as I mentioned I am super low on time and found a pretty decent organic Greek dressing at the grocery store. When I was there checking out the dressings in the organic section I realized maybe I had been holding myself to such a standard that I was actually preventing myself from reaching my weight loss goals because of things such as using store bought items. So I let go a little bit and purchased the dressing and guess what? I’ve lived to tell about it and it was delicious! 🙂 #confessions

I do still LOVE my own Greek Dressing recipe so here is my homemade version:

Greek Dressing

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

1-2 tsp dijon mustard

1-2 tsp honey

salt & pepper to taste

Instructions: Place all ingredients into food processor or high powered blender and blend. (I use my Ninja Master Prep!)

 

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