Virtual Running Date No. 18: A salad experiment

Good morning, Crushers!

For today's virtual running date, I have to admit that I didn't run last weekend. I was not feeling all that great, so running for miles in hot weather did not seem like a prudent idea. That unfair feeling of "why am I sick on a Saturday?" that you had when you were in grade school seemed to follow me into adulthood. "Why do I feel gross in Summer?" Summer should be the healthiest time of year, right? Never mind all the injuries, bug bites and rashes from various plants that emergency rooms see during summer...

Anyway, if we were running today, I'd tell you that we had a house showing this weekend, so our plans got further tossed about by doing a mega clean. Our house is usually very neat, but when we have a house showing, I go in mega clean mode. I even made Steve help me pull apart our big picture window on the front of our house to clean it. FYI - vinegar and water works great, but makes your windows smell like pickles. Perhaps, I'll stick with Windex?

If we were running today, I'd tell you that if you're not feeling so hot, don't run, but I guess I barely listen to my own advice. Instead of running, we decided to play 18 "holes" of disc golf. If you haven't played, find someone out there to teach you. It's really fun! I bet if you tossed it out there on facebook or any other favorite social media site, you'd have a disc golf buddy in no time. It's a nice long walk, you don't usually lose  the discs (I lose at least one golf ball when I golf the regular way every time), and it's a nice alternative to whatever exercise you were going to do.

If we were running today, I'd also tell you about my make-ahead-salad experiment. I have been seeing variations of this idea on Pinterest since I got an account about a year ago, but never really tried it. Or if I did, I bet it went so horribly wrong that I blocked it out of my mind. Regardless, I'm trying it (again). Here is what you do:

1. Gather all your salad ingredients (mine included tomatoes, peppers including some from our garden, salad greens from our garden, onion, radish from our garden, parm cheese and balsamic vinaigrette. 
2. Pour a serving (more or less) of your dressing in the bottom of a container that has a lid. 
3. Chop up the "big" stuff and put those in next.
4. Add any cheese or seasonings.
5. Finally, put your greens in the container and close it up tight.

The idea is that the big veggies put enough of a barrier between the dressing and the salad greens so that they don't go limp by the time that you actually eat them for lunch at work the next day. Here is the before picture:

Note how the dressing at the bottom doesn't even come close to touching the greens.

I'll report back later to see how it looks and tastes. Stay tuned...