Salad in a Jar–this is absolutely FANTASTIC!!!!!

Last week on Jan’s Daily Dish I told you about my FoodSaver not working and my eBay purchase of another one.  It arrived yesterday, brand new with tape and cardboard still intact, so of course I fired it up immediately and it worked perfectly.

So this morning I got up, assembled my ingredients and I was off to the races. 

I used two heads of iceberg lettuce that I washed, chopped and spun dry in the salad spinner.  They don’t recommend you use baby bibb or spring greens, they’re too tender and don’t last as well,  romaine and iceberg work best.  Then I used the slicing blade of the salad shooter to quickly shred all of the other veggies.

Then I gave it all a quick toss to combine all the ingredients in the mixing bowl, which by the way is the greatest, cheapest thing ever.  This huge stainless bowl came from a local restaurant supply house, cost less than $10 and I use it so much, it’s awesome!

I started using a funnel to fill the jars, quickly realized that it was a pain, it was easier to just position the jar over the salad bowl and scoop the greens with a measuring cup.  Hubby doesn’t like green peppers, so I only added them to some of the jars and I didn’t add soft ingredients like cucumbers, tomatoes, or mushrooms as I’ve read that they don’t hold well.  I also used a regular stainless knife to chop my lettuce, even though I have a plastic lettuce knife, there is “supposedly” no need to use it as the lettuce doesn’t turn brown and I’m not a fan of tearing it because I like a finer texture and it’s hard to achieve when tearing it.

Then I wiped off the tops of the jars to make sure they were dry so that the seal would hold and I was ready to vacuum seal them.  It was really fast, really easy, it only took twenty seconds per jar to seal.  And no, there is nothing running down the front of the FoodSaver, it’s just shadows from the jars ;o)

And how long did this take?  From the time I started assembling my ingredients until I put them in the fridge, thirty-five minutes start to finish and I have enough salad to last me for seven days.  And this was the first try, I’m thinking next time it won’t take as long as today because I’ll know what I’m doing.  One mess per week and enough salad to last for days, works for me…