13 Healthy & Quick Summer Salad Ideas

The summer season has arrived and with it comes a desire for fresh, quick, and nutritious dishes. Here are a few recipes that are really simple, and are made of the same ingredients, but create different meals.

You can prepare your summer salad in the evening for a light dinner and keep the rest for a lunch by the sea, a picnic, or a quick take away, no matter where you go.

My rule with my clients when we talk about “home cooking” is to cook once and eat twice. This means that once you’ve put in the effort to make a healthy and nutritious meal for you and your loved ones, simply double the portion, so it’s ready for the next day. We are all busy with wonderful plans, or spontaneous changes, and we want to be prepared to always have our healthy options in the fridge.

All these dishes are very light, based on whole foods and Mediterranean dressing (extra virgin olive oil, salt, lemon, and beautiful fresh herbs; basil and parsley.)

You just need to make time to do your food shop, for vegetables, legumes, fish, and healthy grains. I will also give you some indications to make the meal more balanced and give you ideas to change up some ingredients.

Enjoy and be healthy for this summer!

1) Quinoa salad with beetroot, beans, peas, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and fresh parsley

• You can swap the quinoa, with couscous, buckwheat, millet

2) Quinoa with steamed green beans, mixed salad, beans, and carrots

3) Chickpeas salad with fresh basil, parsley, tomatoes, fennel, and celery

• For a balanced plate, accompany this salad with a piece of healthy bread, like brown bread, rye bread, or gluten free bread

4) Basmati brown rice with fresh cherry tomatoes, celery, fresh basil and garlic

• You can have a bowl of this rice next to a form of animal or vegetal protein you like.

5) Black Venus rice with tuna, beans, cherry tomatoes, celery

6) Amaranth with steamed carrots, cauliflowers, fresh parsley

7) Quinoa with tofu, mixed salad, avocado, cherry tomatoes, and butternut squash.

• You can cook the tofu as you like, grilled, steamed, or in the oven. The butternut squash is an addition to make the dish sweeter, but you can remove it and add some carrots or beetroot instead.

8) Curried Amaranth, with pumpkin seeds, grated ginger, grated cashews, curry powder

• You can replace the amaranth with millet

9) Octopus salads

• Add fresh parsley, basil, carrots, and celery

Or with fennel, celery, lemon, and fresh parsley

• You can accompany this salad with a bowl of grains, like brown rice, couscous, quinoa, or steamed potatoes

10) Prawn salad with fennel, potatoes, mixed leaves, rocket, carrots, and celery

11) Cannellini beans, tuna, red onion and rocket salad

12) Smoked salmon on a bed of orange with fennel, peanuts, and fennel seeds

• For this dish, you can add more fresh veggies like kale, lettuce, or rocket

13) Caprese salad

• Tomatoes with mozzarella, olives, and basil

This typical mediterranean summer dish is accompanied by “frisella’’

• Frisella is a specialty of southern Italy. It’s a round dry piece of bread with a hole in the center. You need to eat the frisella with the food on top, as it’s hard to eat on its own. I wanted to give you the best option for this dish, but if you cannot find it where you are, rye bread works perfectly fine.

Want to talk more about your diet & lifestyle habits for this summer? Please get in touch!

If you are looking for an exercise routine to bring with you, please check below the 3 week Summer Abs & Glutes Challenge on SHAPES! Join for 7 days for free here.

Much love,

Paola xx

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