Homemade salads and vegan dressings

It’s empowering to make your own food, and no more so than salads. Super-nutritious and much cheaper than plastic bagged salads, with more variety too! A proper salad is not just a slice of limp lettuce and watery bottled dressing.

Making your own salads and dressings from scratch is an absolute game-changer. Not only does it take just a few minutes of your time, but the burst of fresh flavor will completely transform how you look at greens. Whether you are craving something bright and zesty to liven

Oh She Glows Salads is a wonderful guide to create your own protein-backed salad recipes, for each season. No more tasteless plastic bags of salad from the supermarket, with this book you can  make your own with healthy ingredients, to store in the fridge.

From refreshing spring and summer bowls to cosy hearty salads for autumn and winter, you’ll soon discover favourites to enjoy  again and again.

Read up on food safety for people and pets. For tinned ingredients, rinse/remove lids (or pop ring-pulls over holes) then step on upper cans to pinch rims together, to stop wildlife getting trapped. 

Unless you have food waste bins, just bin pepper and allium scraps (onion, leeks, garlic, shallot, chives), citrus/tomato/rhubarb scraps. To avoid acids harming compost creatures.

Recipes include:

• Glow Up Pesto Dream Bowl
• Roasted Chickpea and Parm Romaine Crunch Salad
• The Ultimate Ranch Barbecue Tofu Cobb Salad
• Roasted Mediterranean Lentil Salad
• Autumn Crunch Farro Kale Salad

Plus the book has plant-based protein toppers, creamy dressings, vibrant vinaigrettes and savoury cheeses to create restaurant-worthy salads at home.

Angela is one of the world’s best-selling vegan cookbook authors, and author of many recipe books. She lives with her family in Canada.

Tomato & Artichoke Salad (with chickpeas)

This Tomato & Artichoke Salad with Chickpeas (Short Girl, Tall Order) is a refreshing summer lunch recipe, making use of fresh tomatoes and canned artichoke hearts, along with tinned chickpeas for protein and calcium.

Homemade Vegetable Salad (with garlic)

This homemade vegetable salad with garlic (The Simple Veganista) combines cucumber, peppers, tomatoes, onion and garlic, in a homemade lemon Dijon mustard oil dressing.

Homemade Fruity Salad Dressing Recipes

Virgin Olive oil is better for salad dressings health-wise than for cooking (rapeseed oil is better). Some people say we should not eat oil at all (and get all fat from real foods – i.e olives over olive oil). There are debates.

Try these fruity salad dressings (The Veg Space) including raspberry vinaigrette.

Why Hampshire is King of the Watercress!

Watercress is not the most popular salad leaf in England, but it should be. Because it’s tasty, packed with nutrition and most of it grows in Hampshire. If you’re a local food champion, watercress is your man!

Peppery watercress is Hampshire’s best-sold crop, easily cooked, so only add at in the last few minutes for recipes. Also popular in Dorset, it was first eaten by the Romans in the first sandwich! Try this 15-minute watercress soup (Salted Mint).

The county has the right mix of water, ground and weather. Watercress grows best in cool and clean water, and the chalk ground and spring-fed streams make for ideal conditions.

Chalk is a natural water filter, so that means cleaner beds and healthier crops. The mild weather helps too. The Mid Hants railway became so closely linked to the trade, that the route was called the Watercress Line!

If growing your own, use no-dig methods to protect wildlife (also read about pet-friendly gardens).

One bag of watercress is sold each second in England. It’s been popular since Roman times, when it was thought to cure everything from baldness to insanity! Or just to freshen breath.

Best enjoyed from April to September, choose strong green leaves for freshness and only wash and shake dry before use. Store in the fridge (ideally in water) and eat within a couple of days.

A former watercress farm near Chichester, is set to become a glamping site. The owners plan to let tourists help themselves, and remaining beds will be turned into wildlife ponds.

Free Watercress on the NHS?

The founder of England’s largest watercress farm eats it each day, as does his family. He’s so passionate about the crop, he arranges a watercress festival in the village of Alresford.

The company is also trialling ‘free watercress soup’ at an NHS hospital,. This could use up 90,000kg of winter watercress that would otherwise go to waste,  and serve nutritious tasty food to patients.

M & S recently sold a ‘posh egg cress sandwich’ for £6 with ‘whole sliced egg, fresh baby watercress and mayo on two slices of bread’. It did not take long for comments like ”this country is finished’ and that ‘the word posh costs you 3 quid’.

BeSaucy Vegan Mayonnaise (in stores everywhere)

BeSaucy is a fantastic brand of vegan mayonnaise, set up by three siblings in the city of Brighton. It’s sold in stores nationwide, and tastes just like real egg mayonnaise, only even better! You can find it in many stores, or order online with free delivery over £40.

Chan is a dessert pastry chef (who once made dessert for the Queen) so he’s the brains behind the recipes. He’s then joined by his siblings who head up marketing. The secret ingredient is aquafaba, a ‘vegan meringue’ made by whizzing up the leftover brine water from canned chickpeas.

Keep away from pets due to garlic, mushrooms, spices etc.

Sold in various flavours:

• Classic
• Dill & gherkin
• Smoked chipotle
• Garlic
• Black truffle