So they did not work for me. But I decided to try again with just the vegetables. And I love it! This is my second week of making mason jar salad vegetables. I actually look forward to my easy lunch salad now since I can customize it so easily. The hard part for me with salads is prepping the vegetables. So if I do that ahead of time and make 4 or 5 quart jars of salad veggies, then all i have to do is chop/spin lettuce, add meat and dressing of choice. That way you can use whatever leftover meat you want, or meatless with eggs and nuts and cheese, or whatever.
I am currently deciding whether I want to try adding salad leaves to the jars too. We will see. It is kind of annoying using the spinner every day and I don't have a lot of time to spare to eat.
So far this is what I do so far, split between 4 quart jars:
handful of cherry tomatoes (or 1.5 clamshells split in 4)
1 cucumber, sliced into semicircles
8 baby radish, sliced
8 oz mushroom, sliced
1 colored bell pepper, chopped in big pieces
I choose 4 from that list, or whatever is on sale.
I'm also really loving the growers mix that aldi sells. It is enough for about 6 salads.
For meat I always buy 1- 6 oz package of southwest grilled chicken. I use that for 1 or 1.5 salads. Other toppings: leftover taco meat twice, shrimp and a hardboiled egg, leftover shredded pork, pistachios, beans, block parmesan cheese, and queso fresco. And lately for dressing I've been using light champagne vinaigrette from trader joes.
