Awesome salads with grapefruit, orange, rosemary, a perfect way to start 2016...

So… We’re coming up to almost half way through January and we've all probably had to fight the little devil on our shoulder tempting us to break our clean eating and ‘dry January’ promises. Especially if you took up my recommendation in last weeks blog. Just in case you need a little bit of help to get you over the finish line, here's a few things I've been doing this week…

Orange, pink grapefruit & rosemary salad

For a bit of a change, I started adding different citrus fruits to spark a bit more life into the normal salads I make.

Ingredients

Grapefruit, orange and tomato on a bed of spinach, sprinkled with sunflower seeds, finely chopped onion (optional) and finished with some finely chopped rosemary.

Sunflower seeds are good to add a crunchy texture to the salad and give it an earthy nutty taste and a cheaper alternative to pine nuts too.

The acidity and rosemary flavour seems to me to be a very good marriage. If you don’t have rosemary, black pepper also works well. You can also dress this salad lightly with a mix of olive oil and French mustard and salt if you like too.

How to do it

Cut your orange into quarters, then cut the quarters into halves or thirds.
Cut your pink grapefruit into quarters, then cut the quarters into thirds or quarters.
Place on a bed of washed spinach.
Top the orange and pink grapefruit with finely chopped onion (optional).
Sprinkle some sunflower seeds on the top.
Finish with some finely chopped rosemary.
As an alternative to rosemary, add freshly ground black pepper or dress with a mix of olive oil and French mustard and salt.

Orange, avocado & pomegranate salad

Ingredients

Orange, avocado, pomegranate, red onion, a touch of balsamic vinegar and black pepper.

How to do it

Cut your orange into quarters, then cut the quarters into halves or thirds.
Cut your avocado in half, then each half needs to be divided into 6-8 pieces.
Finely chopped onion.
Add the pomegranate, there is a great demonstration of how to the pomegranate seeds easily here.
Pop all the ingredients into your salad bowl.
Overall, you want to see a nice balance of different colours in the salad. This and the taste will indicate that you’ve got it right.
Add a touch of balsamic vinegar and pepper.
Enjoy it and share it with friends if you think they deserve to!

Lentil, sweet potato, sundried tomato & feta

Ingredients

One can of lentils, sun dried tomatoes, sweet potato, feta cheese and some parsley for decoration.

How to do it

Chop the sweet potato into pieces about half the size of a tale tennis ball and add to boiling water. They should take around 12 -15 minutes to cook (depending on the size of your potato pieces). Prick with a fork to check when they are soft. Once they're soft, drain the pan and leave the sweet potato to one side to cool.
Drain your canned lentils and pour them into a salad bowl.
Cut your sun dried tomatoes into quarters.
Chop the sweet potato into smaller cubes/rectangles roughly the size of lego blocks.
Cut the feta into small squares roughly half the size of the sweet potato.
Add the sun dried tomatoes, sweet potato and feta to your salad bowl.
Give your salad a good mix, and add some chopped parsley to decorate.