If getting ready well in advance, travelling, and spending hours at a desk sound challenging to you, try being your lunch for a moment. It takes skill to keep a salad crisp and fresh from weekend dinner preparation to midweek lunch. However, it is doable! Here are some suggestions for making sure your desk lunch stays energised and tasty (while also assisting you in doing the same):
Pack upside down
The greatest salads combine delicate, crisp greens with a happy balance of heartier ingredients like grains, hard-boiled eggs, beans, and shaved and diced vegetables. Pack your salad upside-down to prevent wilting and damaging of the delicate greens: Lay the greens on top of the heavier items in the bottom of your lunch container. When it's time for lunch, empty the contents into a big bowl, toss, and dress. Be sure to keep the container upright while it's being transported.
salad/ unsplash.com
Salads are enhanced by dressings and vinaigrettes, but only if the leaves are seasoned just before serving. Because oils and acids cause greens to wilt over time, it is necessary to pack dressings separately if you want to keep your greens vibrant. Wait to drizzle them until you are ready to eat; otherwise, store them in tiny, firmly sealed snack containers or little jam jars. The same guideline applies to additions like tuna that has been drenched in oil and marinated artichoke hearts: keep them separate from the greens until it's ready to eat.
Keep a wet towel
After packing your salad (inverted, of course), moisten a paper towel with cold water. When it's only slightly damp, wring it out, uncurl it, and place it on top of the greens before covering the container with the lid. Similar to the misters found in the produce section of grocery stores, the damp towel serves the similar objective of keeping salad greens moist and crisp rather than dry and limp.
Refrigerate
Put that salad in the refrigerator if you have one at work immediately! The less time a lettuce spends at room temperature, the less chance there is for wilting to happen (ideally not on the top shelf, which occasionally freezes).
Last preparation
You can still prepare the entire dinner in one sitting if you choose. One warning, though: When you're doing your big prep push, groups all those heavier, tougher salad "toppers" together, such as green beans, boiled potatoes, olives, cherry tomatoes, and jammy eggs. Just before you leave the house each day, add a generous scoop of topping to a container with your greens. The greens are kept crisp and flavorful by separating the elements as long as possible.
