Salads

We eat a lot of vegetables in our house, I pack a vegetable soup for my husband every day for his lunch and then at night we have a big salad as well. Isabella likes salad too and really likes purple cabbage as strange as that sounds,  and right now is going through a carrot phase where she wants carrots all the time, she is sitting here eating carrots and humus for her lunch, she makes sure it is a big carrot, not that little one. Cami is a self declared vegetarian she will not touch any type of meat or chicken even if I blend it into something she spits it out, she loves bell peppers, broccoli, snap peas, and peas-she loves peas, she will eat soup and till recently would eat a few lentils or beans but that's about it oh she loves cheese, she goes to the fridge and points "chi", my husband cringes its one of our differences, he is strictly dairy free and I am for the most part except for hard cheese, I absolutely love cheese after all I am Dutch, I gave it up for a while but then I tried it once when I was pregnant and Isabella loved it and always asked for it  and now Cami, but I try to avoid it in her case since she has problems with constipation. I've read so many different things about dairy and how bad it is for you, but I am still not entirely convinced that its bad for me, I buy cheese made from  pasture raised cows and I figure people have been eating it for generations especially in Europe, so for me its fine at least for now.
    People often ask me for salad recipes, and I really don't know what to say, I just usually mix whatever I have in the fridge and try to make them as colorful as possible. I am always on the look out for new things to put in our salads, so its not always the exact same salad. Now that I am house-bound I only go out once a week so really its just what I find that day at the supermarket.  What I do now since I don't have time to do a whole lot of chopping before each meal, is a couple times a week I do most of the chopping, I very lightly cook the broccoli so its still crunchy and the sugar snap peas I put them in boiling water for maybe a minute if not less, I like them very crunchy, then I put them in separate glass containers. The celery and bell peppers and cabbage I cut every other day so it doesn't get old looking. I know people have theories about putting things in the fridge but honestly there is no way I would have time to make a varied salad if I had to make everything from scratch every single day, I would just revert to eating plain greens (which is what I do when I am alone at home).

The one in the middle looks a little dark because I made a balsamic dressing for it. I really like the snap peas because they give it a nice crunch. What I do with the cabbage is cut it real fine and then leave it for about 5-10 minutes with some Oil, salt and either vinegar and lemon so that it marinates a little, then I mix it into the salad.  I might put a little bit of quinoa on them depending on what I'm accompanying the salad with and also corn, I realize that all these ended up having corn in them but I don't always put it in. I'll keep on posting pictures of salads as I go making them. As far as dressing goes, I should look into more exciting dressings but for right now I just put either lime or apple cider vinegar or balsamic or a bit both and olive oil and salt. Since the greens wilt with the dressing what I do is put the bell peppers, carrots, celery etc, everything except the snap peas, broccoli and greens in a bowl and make the dressing in there while I am heating up dinner then add the broccoli, snap peas and greens but don't mix it till right when we eat it.