by Shay Pascale
The Power Salad. A salad that is chock full or fueling, nutritious food that gives you energy and fills you up. No wimpy salads here. These healthy power salad recipes are filling and taste delicious! I don’t eat food that doesn’t taste good and I wouldn’t expect you to either. In this post I’ll show you 5 power salad recipes you can throw together for easy, healthy dinners during the week.
Need help creating your own power salad recipe? At the bottom of this post I created a cheat sheet just for you to follow so you can build your own salad with ingredients you love.
Why Power Salad Recipes?
If you’re like me, you don’t have much time to cook, especially during the workweek. To be healthy, it’s super important to cook your own food, but cooking can be a bit of an undertaking due to the time it takes. I’d much rather spend that precious time doing other things than preparing food.
Since I don’t want to spend hours cooking dinner each night, I’ve devised an efficient way to prepare power salad recipes that are quick and easy to throw together each night after work.
You’ll see below, my recipes are similar but not the same. There’s definitely a strategy here. A great time saving tip is to reuse the same ingredients but alternate others throughout the week.
If you want to eat healthy during the week but don’t have the time to whip up a gourmet meal every night, this post is for you.
Sunday meal prep
To save you time during your work week, prep your food and cook anything that needs to be cooked on Sunday. What’s great about a salad is that not all ingredients need to be cooked (this is part of the strategy).
For more clean eating recipes try the 5 day clean eating challenge
Take the guessing out of what to eat for weight loss without being hungry! Start the clean eating challenge today!
Time saving tip
Having five of the same salad every night gets boring fast. The key here is to get ingredients that you can swap out to keep the salads interesting throughout the week but not so different that you end up having to cook a lot. Use the same bases such as the greens, complex starches, or lean protein you choose for that week, but change out the veggies, fruit, or toppings.
Below you’ll see what I ate for one week, how I used what I bought on Sunday to modify the salad each day, but not so much it required me to cook extra.
How I meal prepped for power salad recipes this week
On Sunday I went to the grocery store. I always use the same grocery list but update what I need/want for the week in my iPhone notes. Check out this post if you want in on my grocery list or grab it in the sidebar. It’s a time saver in itself.
I seasoned my chicken and cooked it all on the grill along with the bell peppers. I baked my sweet potatoes in the oven, pan seared asparagus, broccoli, and bacon. Everything else is raw and cut each night.
Keep in mind this is just one week’s example. You can pick and choose any of your favorite fresh vegetables. I highly recommend downloading the power salad builder below for more ideas.
Power Salad Recipe Day 1
- Arugula
- Chicken
- Carnitas (pre bought)
- Asparagus
- Cherry tomatoes
- Purple sweet potatoes
- Bacon
- EVOO (extra virgin olive oil)
- Salt and pepper
Power Salad Recipe Day 2
- Kale
- Chicken breast
- Asparagus
- Bell peppers
- Cherry tomatoes
- Sweet potatoes
- Apple
- Bacon
- Lemon squeeze
- EVOO
- Salt and pepper
Power Salad Recipe Day 3
- Kale
- Chicken Breast
- White Sweet potato
- Heirloom tomato (yellow)
- Broccoli
- Bell pepper
- Bacon
- EVOO
- Salt and pepper
Power Salad Recipe Day 4
Very similar to #3 but this is simplified a bit and I subbed my fat from bacon to avocado.
- Kale
- Chicken breast
- Heirloom tomato
- Avocado
- Lemon squeeze
- EVOO
- Salt and pepper
Power Salad Recipe Day 5
- Kale
- Chicken
- Brown Rice
- Avocado
- Heirloom tomato
- Strawberries
- Apple
- EVOO
- Salt and pepper
Summary
Eat smarter, not harder with an easy to put together power salad recipes for each day of the week. Keep it simple, load up the veggies, make it taste great with fresh ingredients and toppers. With this strategy, you’ll save a ton of time and eat super healthy every night.
Take the guessing out of what to eat for weight loss without being hungry! Start the clean eating challenge today!
