Dippers- A Salad Alternative

People often ask me if our family gets bored eating so much salad.  I think that could easily happen, so over the years I've learned some tips and tricks to try to keep it fun.

Below are some of these tips:

• We "name" many of our meals--the boys get to help with that... they love it! 
• We sometimes focus on "presentation" of the food
• We make very creative dressings/dips
• The boys get to use their favorite herbs/spices on their salads (some of their favorites are cumin, garlic powder/granules, onion powder, onion flakes, dill, turmeric, curry, mustard powder... we buy them all in the bulk section of our local health food store).
• I include the boys in the preparation as often as possible--- they even make their own very fancy salads from time to time
• By adding a couple of handfuls of pasta, grains, or beans, the salad becomes a special (quick & inexpensive) meal (more to follow in upcoming days regarding these meals)

When we need an alternative to the typical salad, we have the meal the boys named "Dippers".  Below we focused on the presentation by using an inexpensive textured peeler that creates fancy looking vegetable slices.  This dinner took about 20 minutes to make. We also made 3 unique dips... 1 for each boy.  We used the base dressing for all 3 and added tahini and certain spices for two of the boys and added veggie mayo and spices to the 3rd dip.

We try to focus on seasonal veggies when possible.  Summer Dippers would look very different, including lots of tomatoes!