Leafless Salad!

Ahh, fresh sprouts. They really are delicious. But a problem starts to arise when you realize you have 3 cups of sprouts, and they supposedly only last a few days. How do I use up all these delicious sprouts!? I decided to attempt "preserving" them a bit longer by marinating them in a Lemon-Balsamic Vinegar dressing. I figure, both of these ingredients are natural preservatives so that's gotta work, right!? Here's the dressing recipe I used:

Lemon Balsamic Vinaigrette

1/4 cup lemon juice

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

2 T olive oil

2 t date paste

Whisk all ingredients together and let it set in the fridge for a good couple hours before use.

Now for those marinated sprouts, I added 1/4 cup of that dressing to my sprouts in a jar, shook it up a bit, and let it set in the fridge for awhile.

One thing I've noticed with the whole eating healthier thing is that I don't really like leaf veggie salads. Don't get me wrong, I love leafy greens.. just not as a salad. What do I use my leafy greens for? Well, I used collard leaves for collard wraps, kale for kale chips, spinach for sandwiches or wraps, etc. There are plenty of uses for leafy greens besides salads. 

I decided, with all these sprouts on hand, to make a sprout salad instead! Let me tell you, this is DELICIOUS. The flavors of the veggies compliment each other quite nicely, and the calorie count turns out quite low, all things considered. 

Marinated Sprout Salad

1 cup bean sprouts of choice (I used mung bean), marinated with above dressing

1/2 cup sweet corn kernels

2 T scallions, chopped

1/4 small avocado

1/4 cup chopped red bell pepper

What I did was kind of mash the avocado into the salad and it added a creaminess to it that made it unnecessary to add additional dressing.

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I've decided to start something new with this blog post. From now on, with each of my own recipes that I post, I shall have the nutrition info posted at the bottom. As a calorie and nutrient counter myself, I always find it annoying when people don't post the nutrition info and I have to hunt it down myself. So here you guys go (and thanks Mikey-poopoo for making them)! And as a FYI, my usual source of nutrition information is http://nutritiondata.self.com  I love that website. It has a lot of nifty features on it.