Spring Green Salad with Basil Lemon Dressing

So I found this gem at Everything Spring Green Salad with Basil Lemon Vinaigrette | Ambitious Kitchen. With most things I found it originally through Buzzfeed and then decided to tweak it as best I could. I realize now that I made this on a really bad day to do something thing with this many ingredients because I forgot a good chunk of them. So go by the recipe and not what I have pictures of if you want to stick as closely as you can.

There are obviously a few ingredients that were not FODMAP friendly. Instead of replacing everything I just went with what was left and it was still a pretty solid salad. I didn’t make the full sized thing. I scaled it back to make a single serving but if you have more than one person go ahead and make the whole thing. If you are prepping ahead of time just remember to keep your salty ingredients (seeds, feta, etc) away from your veggies to keep the water from leeching out.

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Spring Green Salad with Basil Lemon Dressing

Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients:

Salad

• 5 cups organic spinach
• 1/2 head red cabbage, shredded
• 1 cup alfalfa sprouts
• 1 cup frozen peas, thawed
• 12 cherry tomatoes
• 1 red or yellow bell pepper, thinly sliced
• 1/4 cup sliced black olives
• 1/4 cup crumbled feta
• 1/4 sunflower seeds
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Basil Lemon Dressing

• 1 lemon, juiced (about 1/4 cup lemon juice)
• 1/4 cup garlic infused olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon dijon mustard
• 1/2 coconut sugar or maple syrup
• 4 basil leaves, finely chopped
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Instructions:

1. To make the basil lemon vinaigrette: Whisk together all vinaigrette ingredients in a small bowl until well combined and emulsified. I used my food processor instead because I’m lazy
2. Arrange the greens on a large serving bowl. Arrange the other ingredients in groups on top of the greens. Serve with the basil lemon vinaigrette on the side. Or if you’re me just even distribute the ingredients for however many bowls you’ll need.

What would I do differently?

Besides remember all the ingredients? Not much. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the salad but that is just personal preference. I generally prefer either lighter salads or ones that pack a bigger calorie punch. This was awkwardly in the middle as heavy with a lot of ingredients but low protein (just the feta and seeds). Maybe I’ll hard boil an egg or something for it next time. We’ll see.