It's a Team's Life

Fresh Salads - Salad in a Jar

By Linda Caffee
Posted Sep 23rd 2013 2:35AM

In the past few months on Pinterest "Salad in a Jar" keeps popping up and each time I would look at how this is done and the process did not seem feasible in the truck. While visiting our daughter I was telling her about these salads and she wanted to give it a try. I pulled up a you tube video about the jars and found out about a new process that I KNEW would work in the truck.

Off we went to buy our salad making supplies, canning jars, salad spinner, thumbtack, and vacuum sealer. We raided Bob's toolbox, found electrical tape and we were ready to start.

While reading about how to keep salad fresh for longer periods we decided that a salad spinner would allow us to quickly wash everything we wanted to put in our salads and dry the produce.

Our Cascadia is very quiet and anything rattling gets on our nerves quickly. On most glass jars I have them wear a koozie but the koozie's I have were not big enough to fit these jars. I decided to kill two birds with one stone and get Velcro squares to fit on the sides of my jars. This would keep the jars apart and not allow them to rattle and at the same time would keep them close enough they would not fall out of the refrigerator when the door is opened.

I also bought chalkboard labels for the jars so that it would be very easy to see when the salad was made and the label is reusable. With everything in place it was time to start the process.

All the vegetables were washed, chopped and spun in the salad spinner. Each jar was packed to the brim with salad. I did not add the salad dressing as that would be easy to add once the salad was on the plate.

What I learned from my first set of jars was not to load them upside down! Without much thought I added the lettuce first and all my topping next which looked great in the jar and upside down when on the plate. So far everything is working out as planned and the salads are staying fresh.

Over the years I have made salads in the truck and mixed all of the ingredients together in a bowl or baggie. What I found is that one or two of the ingredients would go limp or bad and I would end up tossing the whole salad. One other process was to create a salad each time we wanted a salad, this would work once or twice but I quickly got tired of making such a mess for a salad and then cleaning it up every day. I hope that this works out well and during the week we can easily grab a jar and enjoy a fresh salad.