Give children a choice of low-fat dressings in which to dip their carrot, celery, cucumber, and zucchini sticks.
- Vary the look of your pasta salads with a combination of pastas: wagon wheels, shells, twists, and elbows, all in the same salad!
- Instead of pasta salad, try a brown rice or barley salad.
- To save time in making pasta salad, use thawed frozen vegetables. (There’s no need to cook; they’re blanched already).
- Try an antipasto lunch. Arrange on a small plate: chunks of tuna, wedge of hard cooked egg, slices of beet, halved cherry tomatoes, cooked green beans, cooked potato slices. Include a small cup with low-fat or fat-free Italian dressing.
- Add color and extra vitamins to coleslaw with red cabbage (as well as white), green pepper dices, and grated carrot.
Salad Dressings
If you do not have packets of ready-made salad dressing to offer, some easy ways to prepare salad dressing are offered below!
- Make a quick Russian dressing with low-fat/fat-free mayonnaise and catsup, and serve it over cut-up lettuce.
- Use lemon juice instead of vinegar when making a homemade Italian dressing. It tastes less harsh to children.
- Make a quick and tasty French dressing in the blender with tomato soup, onion, sugar, vinegar, and oil.
- Bottled low-fat coleslaw dressing makes a great-tasting white French dressing.
- Make a quick ranch dressing: 1 cup each of low-fat/fat-free mayonnaise, low-fat/fat-free yogurt, low-fat buttermilk; flavor with oregano and dried parsley.
- Make a honey dressing for pieces of fruit or to drizzle over a fruit salad: mix low-fat/fat-free yogurt and honey, and add orange juice concentrate for flavor.