My Quest for More Veggies!

First off, I don't get paid or anything for posts like this one. If I ever do, I will say that it is.

Rouse's, our local grocery store, had a sale on Dole salad kits this week. Complete salads for $1. The points range from 3-4 points per serving. Each bag has 3.5 servings. I'm wondering who is going to eat the .5 of a serving? Hmmmm



Photo by Flickr user VeganWarrior                Anyway, they have several different flavors to choose from. I picked up the Caesar, Asian, Autumn Splendor and Hearty Italian. I have not tried the Asian yet, but hope to soon. Here are my reviews on the others:

The Caesar was good. The shavings of Parmesan and Romano cheese were HUGE! Some of them were over 3 square inches. The croutons were tasty, but the dressing had too much vinegar for my taste.

The Hearty Italian was pretty good. I like the cubes of cheese and salami. The dressing fell short for me again. I am not a wine drinker and don't like super yeasty tastes, so this dressing was deeply offensive to my palate. I ended up making my own Balsamic vinaigrette dressing and using that for my salad.

The final salad was the Autumn Splendor which isn't listed on their website. It contains lettuce, pumpkin seeds, dried cranberries, croutons and a pumpkin vinaigrette. This one is a home run! I loved it! From start to finish, it was perfectly balanced and just what I wanted to go with my vegetable soup. I only hope that this isn't a seasonal salad, because I will be very disappointed in the springtime.

Dole has a whole line of these salads out that I can't wait to try.  I hope to find the Winter Jubilee in my grocery store soon. I am a huge blue cheese fan.

Each of the salads also come with this funny little packet of seasonings. Although I haven't done a comparison all together, they all seem to be the same thing. They do help the bits of salad that lack dressing. I love that all the pieces are in separate little pouches, so I can mix and match what I want on the salad. It is very convenient.

One of the things that is really annoying to me is that the nutrition label lists the nutritional information as all one thing. Since I tossed the salad dressing on two of these in favor of my homemade dressing, I had a huge debate as to how many points each of the other components were. Even on the pumpkin dressing that I loved, I didn't consume a whole serving each time I ate it, because I had plenty of leftovers. If they don't want to use up label space with the nutritional info for each of the components, they could at least put it on their site, which is another one of my issues. While I understand that they are trying to be cutting edge with their site and make fruits and vegetables seem cool, their site sucks! We have the highest DSL speed offered, but their site drags. I click, I wait for the animated lady to look at what I'm doing. Just give me the info already! I can't imagine visiting their site on my parent's cable modem or my sister's DSL light.

My plan for the month is to eat a salad and/or vegetable soup for one meal every day to help account for those holiday meals where the calorie counts are stacked against my weight loss efforts.Anyway, what are you doing to keep your holiday plans from sabotaging your weight loss plans?