Quick and healthy salads

If you are trying to lose weight, and are bored of boiled vegetables or sprouts with lemon dressing, or are looking for some interesting variations of salad that you can serve to kids, try these four mouth watering salads that are really easy to make, and are low in calories and high on nutrition:

1. Pasta Salad

Ingredients:

Pasta (boiled)                    - 1 cup

Capsicum                          - 1 piece

Carrot                                - 1 piece

Onion                                -1 piece

Cheese (cut into cubes)

Mayonnaise                       - 1 tbsp

Curd                                      - 3 tbsp

Cut all the vegetables in small dice shapes. Mix mayonnaise with curd and stir well. Now mix veggies, cheese and pasta with the curd. Add pepper powder as per you taste. Keep it in fridge for an hour and serve cold. You can add coriander leaves to decorate.

Tip- Adding curd prevents use of mayonnaise, thus less fat. 

2. Crunchy Nut Salad

Ingredients
Cucumber  - 1
Carrot - 1

Onion (Diced) – 1

Peanuts - ½ cup

Almonds - ½ cup

Dates and raisins - ½ cup

Mayonnaise - 1 tbsp

Curd - 1 cup

Crush peanuts and almonds roughly. Add dates and raisins in it. Mix curd and mayonnaise well and add to the nuts. Finely chop the cucumber and carrot in dices and add them to the above mixture. You can add salt and pepper if needed.  

3. Banana Salad

Ingredients:

Banana - 2 whole

Tomato -2 roughly chopped

Cumin powder  - ½ tsp

Salt     - as per taste

Lemon Juice  - 1 tbsp

Sugar   - 1 tbsp

Chop bananas into chunk and add tomato to it. Now add the salt, sugar and cumin powder. Pour the lemon juice and decorate with peanuts and coriander. 

4.Chickpea Salad:

Ingredients:

Chickpea           - 2 cup

Cottage Cheese - 150 grams

Onion                - 1

Green Chilly     - 1 Finely Chopped

Tomato              -1

Lemon juice      - 2 tbsp

Coriander leave - few to decorate

Soak the chickpeas overnight and boil them. Chop the onion and tomato finely. Cube the paneer into small pieces. Mix all of them and add chilly and lemon juice. You can salt as per you taste. Decorate with coriander leaves.

A common myth is that chickpeas are full of carbohydrates and increase fat content in your body. In fact, chickpeas are rich source of zinc and proteins. Infact they are healthy source of food for diabetic person and pregnant ladies.

The post was originially written for http://beashealthliving.com. The Bea’s Knees is a one stop place for health tips, diets, fitness and exercise tips, home and gardening, pets, childcare, fashion, gadgets, movies, music, relationships, and life-cheats.