Easy desk salad

Good morning and a hearty welcome to you! Meal Prep Monday post, all ready to go! Today's recipe is a super simple and easy desk salad. We have a base of cos lettuce, some sun-dried tomatoes and feta, topped with a sliced avocado and a hard-boiled egg.

I made this because I'd been in a slight cooking rut, was sick of buying lunches and really wanted to Meal Prep something, even though I didn't have time go out shopping. I literally looked through my fridge and picked whatever I could find that I thought might make a decent meal. I'm glad to say that the result was this delicious salad, full of good fats and protein.

It takes about fifteen minutes all up - and most of the prep can be done while the eggs are boiling and cooling. I was wondering if it might be too simple to share as a recipe here, but I couldn't argue with the taste. And of course, complicated doesn't necessarily mean better! As long as it's tasty, healthy, and nourishing, it definitely deserves a place on Meal Prep Monday.

Just quietly, I'd actually wondered if my Silken Tofu Bowl might be too simple to be a proper recipe here on the blog (You didn't even cook your own rice, Sarah, what kind of Asian are you?), but I actually got some unsolicited feedback from a friend of mine who doesn't cook much, saying she thought the recipe looked great and that she really wanted to make it. So that simple recipe was helpful for her, and I do hope this simple recipe will be useful for you!

Normally I like to prepare my four meal preps for the week all at once on a Sunday. However, the prep time for this is so low that I think it makes more sense to buy all the ingredients at once, and assemble two lunch boxes at a time. This way the avocados are less likely to go really brown, and the lettuce is less likely to get soggy. The recipe below makes enough for two lunches, so buy more if you want to make more lunches throughout the week.

I was also worried they might be a bit light, so I bulked up my lunch with some bliss balls and a little portion of blueberries. I also always forget to eat fruit, so bringing some to work meant that I wouldn't forget! I got the coconut-covered bliss ball as a sample from a catering company, and the peanut butter balls I made from a recipe I found online. I didn't love the peanut butter ball recipe, but I can heartily recommend my peanut butter cookie dough protein balls or my peanut butter chocolate protein balls instead!

Happy Monday everybody! You got this.

Easy Desk Salad
An original recipe by Sarah Cooks

Ingredients
2 eggs
1 x mini cos lettuce
10 sun dried tomatoes in oil, roughly chopped
25 grams feta cheese
1 small avocado
Lemon juice, salt and pepper

Method
Place the eggs into a saucepan of cold water. Place on a medium heat and bring to the boil. Once the water reaches a boil, clamp a lid on and turn off the heat. Allow to sit for 8 minutes, then drain and rinse under cold water. Once cool enough to handle, peel and set aside.
Chop the cos lettuce thinly crossways, and divide between two serving containers.
Top with the sun dried tomatoes and crumble over the feta.
Peel and slice the avocado and divide between the containers. (No joke, I have an avocado-slicing tutorial on my blog). Season with salt and pepper and squeeze lemon juice generously over the avocado.
Sliced the hardboiled egg and arrange over the salad, season the egg with salt and pepper.
If you like, you can drizzle the salad with some extra virgin olive oil, but I think in this case it softens the lettuce too much, and I find there's enough flavour going on already.
Makes 2

Have you made this recipe? Leave a comment below! Tag me on Instagram @sarahcooksblog and hashtag #sarahcooksblog