Weight Loss Spinach & Feta Herby Salad, with Pearled Barley - An Original Recipe

Yep, another salad, but trust me they're all so different that I'm nowhere near bored of salads yet!  As this mild weather continues I still don't feel like eating big cooked meals, so salads are perfect because there's multitudes of different flavour combinations, different types of vegetables and fruit, different herbs, different grains to use, different protein components (eg cheese, eggs, beans, etc).  

It's so funny to think when I was growing up salads seemed to consist only of limp lettuce, floppy cucumber and dry tomatoes... Why oh why serve such a boring salad to children, when really we need to serve tasty and colourful salads so that they grow up enjoying not enduring these healthy meals!

I firmly believe that if children can develop tastes for a wide array of vegetables, fruits, legumes, wholegrains, lean proteins, and all these other lovely healthy foods, they won't struggle so much with weight issues later on in life.  Me - I didn't even know the word 'legume'; the only grain I was really familiar with was rice (white crappy rice to be precise); and I had no idea how to flavour a salad with anything other than Heinz salad cream.  Thankfully I have always had a very active lifestyle so I didn't pile on the pounds like many other less-active young people, but my diet was heavy on the 'bad' carbs and I didn't eat nearly enough veg.  So, familiarity of healthy foods and a good nutritional understanding is absolutely essential, in my opinion, in order to maintain a healthy weight.  And it's best to teach the little 'uns waaaaay before they become hard lovers of stodgy processed food.  After all, prevention is better than a cure, as they say!

For a few different salad ideas you may like to have a nosey at my other recipes:

Caramelised Carrot & Red Onion Salad, with Bulgur and Cilantro Flowers 

Warm Squash, Feta & Freekeh Salad

Satiating Slimmer's Salad

Lucky Shamrock Salmon Salad

Ingredients:

30g pearled barley

Fresh spinach leaves

25g feta cheese

1 large carrot

Handful baby plum tomatoes

Approx 10 slices cucumber

1 red onion

3 cloves garlic

1 or 2 broccoli florets 

Handful fresh thyme

Handful fresh oregano

Squeeze fresh lemon

Drizzle Manuka honey

Black pepper

Method:

Put the pearled barley into a saucepan and cover with cold water.  Bring to the boil and simmer for about 30 minutes until tender.  Drain and rinse with cold water.

Slice up the cucumber, onion, garlic, tomatoes... Grate the carrot... Finely chop the broccoli.

Finely chop the herbs.  (So fresh and pretty!)

Put all the prepared salad veg into a bowl and mix in the herbs and barley.  Give a good squeeze of fresh lemon, a drizzle of Manuka honey, and sprinkle of black pepper.  Toss with your hands or a spoon.

Dice the feta cheese.

Wash and pat dry the spinach with a clean tea-towel.  Chop or tear the leaves into bite size pieces (unless you're using baby spinach, which is the perfect size!)  

Put the spinach into a bowl, then the salad veg, and finally scatter the feta cheese on top.  Serve and enjoy!

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Many thanks.
 

For extra tips on health for you and your family, can also support me as Natural Health Mama at: https://www.facebook.com/naturalhealthmamma and https://naturalhealthmamablog.wordpress.com/
 

All photos in this post are my own original.