The Lazy Genius Podcast - #56: The Lazy Genius Makes Salad

Episode Date: March 19, 2018

Salads made by someone else are almost always better than ones we make ourselves. Let's remedy that, shall we? Learn the three salad rules and how to go from Matt Saracen salad to Tim Riggins salad. Stuff Mentioned In This Episode: stainless steel bowls salad spinner (holds a lot of lettuce, uses a pump that's easy for people with hand issues or tiny kid hands, super sturdy) kale and mango salad - one of my all-time favorite salads How To Tell If a Recipe Is Any Good download the transcript of this episode This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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From binge all episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. You're listening to The Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm Kendra and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I never thought when I decided to give myself this job that I would spend 20 minutes talking under earbuds about salad. But here we are. Today is episode 56. The Lazy Genius makes salad. It is a true scientific fact that salad made by any other human is better than a salad we make ourselves without question.

But let's try and change that a little today. In the playbook, we're going to talk about the three rules of making salad, break down the greens you can use, and talk about topping ideas, including a few unsung heroes. So, let's jump in. First, can we do a little visualization exercise about salad? Is that weird? Think about great salads that you've had, or even just one, one standout salad. Think about what made it so good.

Was it the flavor, the different textures, everything was perfectly bite-sized? there was the perfect amount of dressing distributed evenly. Maybe it's the dressing itself. Try and pinpoint even one characteristic of a great salad that you remember. Now, think about salads you've had that haven't been great. And why? Soggy. Because of too much dressing. Dry, because there wasn't enough dressing. Vegetables were limp. Vegetables were like too crunchy. Maybe all the pieces were too big and you had to cut every single bite. One of my favorite comedians, his name is Demetri Martin. And he does this bit about salad, how we like cut up a salad. But then every bite, you're basically making another mini salad.

Like each fork full, you have to cut the cherry tomato in tiny pieces and put one of those tiny pieces on your fork every time. Like you basically make dozens and dozens of salad every time you eat one salad. That is too much work. That is so much work. It's so true. We don't need to see salad that way. So, and that's one of the reasons why it feels like such a chore and why we don't

really want to do it at home, right? It's just madness. So there are many things that can make a salad good or bad. But right now, just bringing them to mind is important as we keep going. Like, think about what makes a salad really exciting to you and devastatingly terrible. So as we move forward, recognize that everything we talk about is designed to get us far from bad salads and cozyed up with good ones. So let's start with my three salad rules. Because if we're going to go through the making a salad. Let's do it well, right? Let's do it the right way. So salad rule number one, make and toss your salad in a big bowl and then move it to the bowl you'll eat it in. Now, I know, this feels wasteful. I pride myself on figuring out ways to wash as few dishes as possible. But the best

salads have all the ingredients mixed together well and the dressing is like evenly distributed everywhere. Those good salad experiences you've had have almost certainly included a well-mixed salad and if you try and toss your salad in your eating bowl it's too small food goes everywhere and dressing gets caught and lettuce crevices and it doesn't get all over everything it's one of the best tips to making your salad delicious toss everything with plenty of room to be had okay you can totally eat your salad out of that giant bowl so you don't have to get a second one to wash but you might enjoy the speciality of it a bit more if it's in a regular one right my favorite salad tossing bowl that I also use as a baking bowl and a food prep bowl and pretty

much all kinds of cooking bowls is a shallow stainless steel bowl. I'll link to the kind I mean in the show notes, but I've always gotten mine at a local restaurant supply store. Pro tip, if you've never been to a restaurant supply store, you're missing out. Stuff is high quality because it has to be to be in a restaurant, but it's not high priced. And you'd be surprised at how many towns have one. Like restaurants, they need supplies. So if you live in a place that has restaurants, you almost certainly have a restaurant supply store. These bowls are a great thing to get at one. I use them exclusively. Like anytime I need a bowl, it's the stainless steel bowls that I grab always. I used to have those glass mixing bowls, the ones with the wide lip that I in a garden uses on Bear Fet Contessa.

But they were like somehow harder to clean and they're so heavy. And yes, they're very pretty, but they're just not easy to use for me. So the stainless steel bowls, I mean, they're not cute. They are not Instagram pretty, but they are workhorses. And I love them so much. So toss your salad in one of them someday. Okay, so rule number one, toss your salad and a big bowl. Rule number two.

Salads require contrast. The best salads have contrasting textures, temperatures, flavors, even colors. Think about it like putting together an outfit or decorating a room or taking a photo. whatever creative medium you feel most comfortable with. You'll be very happy with an outfit of like jeans and a black shirt, but that outfit pops. If you contrast like a feminine white necklace, I'm not great at clothes against the black shirt,

or if you put high heels on instead of tennis shoes with the jeans. In a room, if all the colors are the same level of saturation, it's not as exciting as a room with pops of color or like a dark wood coffee table on top of a phone. on top of a fluffy light-colored rug. In photos, this is huge, contrast is huge. Photos with shadow and highlight and interesting contrasts are really pleasant to look at. We love contrasts and salads are no different. You can go with a standard house salad with all cold, crunchy things, right? Iceberg,

cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and dressing. But if you had crunchy bacon, some creamy gorgonzola cheese, grilled chicken, toasted nuts, you have some contrast. You have some contrast. testing textures and flavors and temperatures that are going to make your salad experience so great. I think that's where we often go wrong with salad. There just isn't enough contrast. But we don't notice it because we're too distracted by the sadness that all the salad brings us. So we will remedy that with the next rule. So rule number one, toss your salad in a big bowl. Rule number two, you have to have contrast. And rule number three, never make just one salad. It's too much work, you all. So why do all that work for only one salad? Chopping a few extra of an ingredient is no big deal

once you're kind of already in the salad zone, right? But let's go beyond even chopping or washing extra stuff. Actually make another salad, maybe a few. The thing that makes salads gross is when the dressing sits on there too long. So your best bet is to either add the dressing when you actually eat the salad or layer it properly. And that means that the dressing goes on the bottom. as far away from the greens as possible. Shall we talk briefly about layered salads? You might have seen salads in a mason jar on Pinterest. They're adorable, right?

And easy to store, and they're kind of inspiring when you open the fridge. But you're not supposed to eat the salad in the mason jar. That's kind of where they get you. So if I'm encouraging you to toss your salad in a big bowl, like think about it. There's no way you can toss it in a jelly jar. Think of a jar of salad like a can of soup. you're not going to eat the soup out of the tin can unless you're in a zombie apocalypse or something or like a 1950s movie orphan the jar of salad is just a pretty storage vehicle that also keeps it

fresh and ready to go so pack that salad tight and right and no harm will befall it and that's how you can make more than one salad at once and save loads of prep time so let's run through the order of your layers let's kind of dig deeper into this so first dressing put it in the bottom of the container a jar a plastic container anything tall is better than wide okay because the dressing doesn't have um it has longer to go it has further to go to get to the greens so putting the dressing in first it keeps everything from getting limp and gross the middle is is kind of your call and the top is the greens that's the basic order it's like dressing everything else greens there are so many salad options it just kind of depends on what you're putting in your salad so think about what you want

soaking in the dressing and that gets layered first. I love to put cherry tomatoes and cucumbers and raw onions like those crunchy raw vegetables on the bottom. It's like the dressing almost marinerates those vegetables. You could put chickpeas next to the dressing or roasted vegetables. I personally like to not put any protein in the dressing like put that in first because it kind of soaks up the dressing and almost changes the texture of the meat somehow. It's just me. But the only real rule is dressing on the bottom, greens on the top. Think about how you want the middle to jive, and you're fine. The beauty of the salad jar dump is that the greens end up on the bottom of the bowl because they're on the top of the jar, right? So when you dump out the jar into a bowl,

the greens land on the bottom, and then they get weighed down by all the stuff, and then the dressing is last, and it's more easily tossed around with each other. It's like just ready to go. You lucked into efficiency right there. So use the three salad rules as much as you can. You can. You can, you can toss the salad in a large bowl contrast contrast contrast and never make just one salad if you find yourself making a salad for lunch one day make another one in a jar make a couple in a jar and it'll be ready to go the next two days save yourself some time now let's do a quick ingredient rundown we'll talk about the greens briefly and then i'll go into some fun unsung topping heroes and combos that might be fun and we'll end on dressing okay so first green iceberg it's the most

common, but also mostly water. That means it has an unmatched crunch, you guys. Iceberg is the crunchiest, most delightful lettuce. And it shouldn't be ignored just because it doesn't hold as many nutrients as other greens. It pairs better with creamy dressings than oil-based ones. And it doesn't respond to heat well. So serving it with warm ingredients doesn't always fly. That said, stick with iceberg when you want a comforting salad. Creamy dressing. Bacon. blue cheese. There is a reason that the wedge salad is iconic because it's delicious. You contrast that watery, crunchiness with smooth and creamy and you have magic, right? Contrast, contrast, contrast. Next, Romaine and leaf lettuce. They're similar. I mean, they're different, but they're similar. So let's

look at them together. Romaine is kind of the big brother of green leaf lettuce in that it is stronger texturally and a little bit bolder in flavor. It's like a bit more bitter. leaf lettuce has more sweetness than romaine um but romaine is a favorite lettuce for lettuce wraps it's like already in a perfect boat shape and it holds up to the heat of any fillings really well leaf lettuce is my favorite for sandwiches it still tastes like something but it isn't too assertive and it's already it's already kind of bread shaped is that weird now for salads they're both great staple lettuces romaine holds up to warmer ingredients better because it has farther to go to wilt just because it's stronger. But anytime you're making a salad, these are both great choices.

Like, they're just kind of go-toes. Plus, they're both really healthy. Like, even all around healthier than kale, believe it or not, those kale people, they're out to get us. Greenleaf and Romaine actually have more nutrients than kale. Speaking of kale, at least that's what the internet says. Speaking of kale, it's a great salad green if it's used the right way. I'll link to it in the show notes, but one of my favorite salads ever is from our. Artie Sequera, who used to host, maybe she still does host, a show on the Food Network. I think it's called Artie Party, which is the name of her first cookbook, which I own, and is great. And that cookbook includes this recipe, but it's online too.

So I'll link to it at the lazy genius collective.com slash lazy slash salad. It's a kale salad with a lemon-y vinaigrette, fresh mango and pumpkin seeds. Sounds crazy, but it is magical. it uses and all salads in my opinion should use lucinato kale i think that's how you say that word sometimes it's called dinosaur kale or purple kale it's a deep green almost purple in color and it looks like something you'd use to fan an egyptian princess like it's really ornate and beautifully like fanny and it's delicious the key to using kale in a salad is to massage the dressing into the kale with your hands seem super weird but kale is really tough and it needs to be loved a little before it's eaten

raw so use an oil and vinegar kind of dressing which is really all dressings that aren't creamy like ranch um you don't want to massage ranch into kale that's kind of gross um but the vinegar in kind of an oil based dressing it essentially breaks down the texture of the kale just enough to make it awesome like the kale still raw but it just kind of softens up a little bit in flavor and in texture. Again, I'll link to that kale salad so you can die and go to Indian salad heaven. It's so good. But don't be afraid of kale and salads as long as you use dinosaur kale and massage it first, like the lettuce princess that it is. Next is my favorite grugula. I'm obsessed with goroagola. It tastes sweet with a peppery finish and it's so good. I eat it raw.

like from the farmer's market bag is a snack raw. Good arugula, in my opinion, it's hard to eat. It is great piled onto sandwiches and certainly so good in salads. I do think that heat tends to mask the flavor a little bit. Raw arugula is far tastier than cooked or even slightly wilted arugula. Of course, you can use it however you like, as to my opinion, but it sings as an ingredient when it is the star, when it is raw and it is the star. Look forward to this in the summer.

summer and fall you guys toss arugula with a dressing made from lemon juice and olive oil just really simple add in some chopped farm fresh tomatoes the sweeter and juicier the better use a vegetable peeler to shave big chunks of parmesan on top and that's it and die of salad happiness like it is so simple and so good but when the ingredients are fresh and awesome you'll want salad more than a hamburger or maybe next to your hamburger i mean i let's Let's not get crazy. But you don't have to kind of go crazy with using all these different ingredients. If you just use things that are really fresh, that go together, and that have good contrast, you're set.

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wonder and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Next screen is my second favorite, Napa Cabbage. I'm obsessed with Napa Cabbage. It makes the best base for Asian-inspired salads. It's cabbage, obviously, but it has a much lighter texture. It's not as thick, and the flavor is light too. Like all of it's lighter than kind of a standard cabbage. it looks like a head of lettuce with tall hair. It just has a bad haircut. But you don't have to buy the whole head of napa cabbage. In most grocery stores, napak cabbage is sold by the pound and any item, listen up, you guys, any item that's sold by the pound and not by the item, it can be taken apart.

So if napa cabbage is sold by the pound in your store, get one of those plastic produce bags and gently take off as many leaves as you need from the whole head. you don't have to buy the whole head. I spoke to a real grocer about it. And he said that that's totally great. They keep it together so it's easier to buy by the head, but also because it stays fresh longer. Like if they took all the leaves off and sold them loose, it would take up for produce bins and it would go bad in a day. So keep that in mind when you're buying vegetables. If it's sold by the pound, get however little you want. You can just take it off of the main thing. My favorite way to eat napa cabbage is really thinly sliced with carrots, green peppers, grain onions, loads of herbs like cilantro and mint, even basil, chopped peanuts, warm grilled chicken,

and a soy sauce and rice wine vinegar dressing. Top it with crunchy sesame seeds. Oh man, I'm a very happy human. It's so good. Okay, two more greens. Spinach. Spinach is a go-to salad green, but y'all, does anyone else hate the texture of raw spinach? Like, it coats. your mouth. There's no other way to say it. It coats your mouth with like a film. It's just unpleasant. I'm definitely a cooked spinach person and I leave it out in my salad life. But the spinach salad is as iconic as the wedge salad. So I can't fully knock it. If you love raw spinach, baby spinach will leave less of that film and be a more tender texture. It also benefits from warmer ingredients to cook and wilt the spinach just a little bit, unlike iceberg or green leaf lettuce.

That's why if you see a spinach salad with warm bacon dressing, you are in for a treat. The contrast of bitter spinach with rich fatty ingredients like bacon, eggs, like hard-boiled eggs or sunny-side-up eggs, rich flavorful cheese is like goat cheese and feta or with roasted or sauteed vegetables like mushrooms or artichokes is what makes spinach come alive as a salad green. It's in desperate need of that contrast rule number two. So keep that in mind as you put your salad together. This is not the time for a bunch of cold, crunchy vegetables. You will be so very disappointed.

And finally, spring mix. This usually, it's in those big clamshells, right? This usually has spinach, baby green leaf lettuce, and then a ton of bitter greens, like dandelion, chickory, indive, or andive, if you're fancy, and radicchio, that's the purple stuff. I think the reason they make that mix is because people like convenience. and are willing to deal with all the bitterness inside that plastic clamshell container.

Now, I do enjoy spring mix when it's contrasted with the right things. But this is why that second rule is so important. If you don't contrast and balance out all that intense bitterness in spring mix, you're not going to enjoy your salad. If you toss spring mix with a tangy vinaigrette,

there's not enough roundness in your salad. There's something to anchor it down. All those tangy, bitter flavors bounce around your mouth. like intense fireworks with nothing to mellow it out. So if you find yourself reaching for spring mix because you should be eating more salad, but you never find yourself enjoying that salad, that is probably why. There's not enough balance. There's not enough contrast. So think cheese, nuts, bright herbs like basil and mint, tarragon to kind of help out that bitter spring mix.

So that's the lowdown on greens. Now I've said several times that you want to avoid a salad with just a bunch of bright, crunchy vegetables. And while that's true, let me break that down for a bit as we go into some topping ideas and salads unsung heroes. Think about eating a plate of bright crunchy vegetables and stick form. Carrets, green peppers, cucumbers, cuckers, et cetera. When you eat them alone, they're fine, right? But when you dip them in ranch or french onion dip? Gracious. And it's not simply that putting something fatty on anything makes it better. That's not entirely true in this scenario. Crunch. Crunch bitter, watery, raw vegetables are better served with a little creamy contrast. Whether it's fatty or not,

hummus is a great example of a non-fatty, creamy pairing. Our mouths and brains love contrasted textures and flavors. So I think that all salads benefit from them. This is why a simple green salad at a restaurant, like the house salad, right, with just spring mixed grains, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, sliced green pepper, and Italian dressing is fine. It's fine, but it feels a little sad. A green house salad is kind of like Matt Saracen and Friday night lights. It's sturdy, it's dependable, perfectly fine, but it kind of makes questionable pairings. That's, I'm talking about Julie. We're talking about Julie. A well-contrusted salad is for sure Tamariggins. All those dissoning parts that come together like a smoking hot bowl of perfection. So Matt Saracen is fine and what you might

need sometimes. But if you're eating salad, especially as a meal, you want a Tim Reagan salad. So how do we make a Tim Reagan salad? A Timmergan salad is oozing with contrast because you need, it's like you need the bad boy and the little brother who's just trying to measure up and the strong, talented football player who also shows up late because he's afraid of his own potential. It's contrast, y'all. So let's get detailed. Let's talk about crunchy stuff first. This is how we put together a Tim Rigan salad. There are two kinds of crunchy. There's like crisp crunchy, like raw vegetables, and then crunchy crunchy like nuts and croutons. Sometimes you need both kinds of crunchy, but every salad needs at least one. Now, you want to contrast that crunchiness

with creaminess, and you can get that with more than ranch dressing. Creamy dressings are definitely magical, but you can also get creaminess from cheese, beans, and even things like roasted sweet potatoes, incredibly creamy and delightful in salads. Now, there is an interesting category of food that isn't talked about often, and we're going to right now, and that's volume. Not math volume, like how much space something takes up. That's what volume is, right? But flavor volume, almost like on your radio. Some foods are quiet, and others are loud. Bib lettuce is quiet. Redicchio is loud. That's the purple stuff, right? it's super bitter. And you know when it's in your salad because it's really loud.

So you want to have contrasting volumes as well. If you have a salad of all quiet things, it'll be a boring salad. If you have a salad with all loud things, you'll kind of want to die because your taste buds will have nowhere to get a break. So when you're putting together your timorigan salad, think about what flavors are louder than others and make sure there's a balance. I would rather have a salad that's too loud than one that's too quiet. So a quiet salad, a quiet salad is like iceberg lettuce, carrots, chicken, and $1,000 dressing.

Everything's pretty quiet. There's nothing exciting that pops out. It's fine, but you know. So don't forget about volume when you're thinking about contrast and putting together your Timmergin salad. Another place to get contrast is in temperature. Having a mix of cold, room temperature, and even warm foods makes for a lovely, interesting salad. If you are overwhelmed right now by all the things, to consider in your salad. Really, all you have to do is just start with a green and a main

ingredient and then build out from there. Do you have a romaine in the fridge and some leftover steak? Okay. How can you add some creaminess? There's no creaminess yet, right? How can you add some crunch? You've got the romaine, but how can you add maybe a different kind of crunch? Steak and lettuce aren't terribly loud either, so maybe consider a bright, louder dressing made with lime. you could put some crumbled tortilla chips on it and warm creamy black beans and that's a salad it doesn't have to be complicated and thankfully it also doesn't have to be measured salads don't require perfectly measured ingredients you can play around and not end up in a danger zone okay so let's talk about specific ingredients as we wrap up here this will take long because we've laid so much groundwork on what the ingredients will do for your salad some unsung heroes roasted vegetables y'all you have not lived until you've had a salad with roasted vegetables sweet potatoes, brussels, broccoli, green beans. Delightful. They offer warmth, a deeper flavor from the roasting, depth from the fact that they were roasted in fat, usually a medium volume. They're kind of good either way and a texture that still has a bite to it, but it's not crunchy raw.

So start putting roasted vegetables in your salads. Canned beans are also great in salads. Chickpeas are a personal favorite. They add creaminess, a quiet volume to contrast anything loud that you want to add, and they can be served at any temperature, which is great. Grains. Cooked grains, you guys, are such an unsung hero in salads. I don't like quinoa alone. The flavor's too loud for me. But if I pair that loud flavor with contrasting volumes, textures, and temperatures,

I have a salad I want to eat. For example, quinoa with big chunks of creamy feta, roasted cherry tomatoes, so not anything like super tart and loud. Roasted cherry tomatoes have a sweeter, deeper flavor. fresh cucumber fresh mint think about that salad quinoa feta broasted cherry tomatoes fresh cucumber and fresh mint serve it with a piece of pita or non that you like stashed in your freezer and that is a lunch that you will look forward to that sounds so good another thing another unsug category topping grilled or caramelized vegetables are awesome too if you grill zucchini or slabs of onion or corn on the cob for

dinner and you have some left over, save those puppies and make a salad the next day. They give great texture, such a deep flavor without being too loud, and you're still getting vegetables without them all being raw and crunchy. Animal proteins, of course, grilled chicken, steak, salmon, herbald eggs, bacon, you can't go wrong, adding one or more of those to a salad to give it some lovely depth. And salads with bacon are always more satisfying, obviously, than salads without bacon. cheese we know the bags of shredded cheese i personally prefer blocks of cheese because they're creamier and they don't have a coating on them to keep the grated pieces from sticking together that's why

grated cheese melts differently than a um black cheese that's grated because it doesn't have this coating on it that keeps the great grated pieces from sticking that said we all know about cheddar blue cheese, maybe fed up, consider goat cheese, diced brie, fresh mozzarella, giant shavings of Parmesan or Asiago or other hard cheeses. Y'all know I'm a pretty frugal person, but buying the tiniest bit of gray cheese will do wonders for your meals, especially your salads. And Aldi has a surprising collection of cheeses that are tiny portions, not those huge hunks at Costco, and they're really great price.

So if you want to try out having a fun, fancy cheese for your salads, there's not much risk or price commitment involved in that. Nuts and seeds. Toasted nuts and seeds have more flavor, but don't let that stop you. You don't have to toast it. Sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, pecans, walnuts, almonds, even peanuts and Asian-inspired salads like that Napa Cabbage salad I told you about. Such a great addition. Fruit, you guys, dried and fresh are both great. You get sweetness and tartness.

And depending on what you choose, you have lots of texture options, too. So dried cranberries are a favorite, of course. Also, fresh apple, pear, Clementine or mandarin pieces, grapes, berries, blueberries and a salad. Fruits are such a great addition to salads. An arugula salad with blueberries, goat cheese, and walnuts. You guys, it's magical. Avocado is not an unsung hero. It's a major, major salad. salad hero. But let's think about why for a quick second. It's creamy. It has a quiet volume. It's cold, usually. It goes with a ton of different flavors. Works equally well in Asian salads to Tex-Mex to a standard cop salad. Be sure to add a little salt to your avocado before tossing it in your salad and all will be well. So good. So that is such a good, good topping that we often forget to put in our salads. And then quickly, about dressings. There's just one rule. Eat what's

It's delicious. You can make your own. And also don't be ashamed to buy all the bottles. If you find a dressing you love, it'll make you far more likely to make a salad and actually enjoy it. So eat what you love, whether you made it or not. That's all I have to say about that. We all have such varied tastes and preferences and access to ingredients even. So we won't do any more specific combinations, but do this. This is your podcast homework. Google or look on Pinterest for salad recipes. Read a few ingredient lists and try and figure out if it's a good salad. I shared a post called How to Tell If a Recipe is Any Good this month that I'll link to in the show notes. And it helps you tell it just about any recipe is a good one. Listening to this episode has done the same thing for when you come across salad recipes. Now you know what to look for to know if it's a good salad. Look for contrast, texture, temperature, volume. If the list is all crunchy stuff, consider how you can add some creaminess to it.

or notice recipes that sound amazing and why why do they sound amazing if you just start paying attention to the contrast you will up your salad game in such a huge way and you can join me live on instagram we can talk about some salad combos then if you like okay so before we go let's do the lazy genius tip of the week the most likely way to eat your salad is to have your lettuce washed and ready to go right and the best way to keep it lasting a long time is to do the following you're going to run a sink of cold water, like fill it up, take apart the leaves or dump the greens from the clam shell into the water, swish it around to knock off all the dirt. It'll fall right to the bottom of the sink. And that doesn't always happen if you just rinse the lettuce under water. You don't

really get rid of all the dirt that way. And then you're going to spin your lettuce dry. I will link to a favorite salad spinner in the show notes. Or you can put a handful of leaves inside of a dish towel, kind of close it up and then spin it around just do that by a sink or your floors are going to get a bit of a shower that that's an easy way that you can like literally make your own salad spinner inside of a towel then here's the important part then you're going to lay the grains in one layer on like a sheet of paper towels you can stack the layers so like paper towel greens paper towel greens and kind of stack it up and then you're going to loosely roll those paper towels together or kind of like fold them together put that in a Ziploc bag and and your greens will stay fresh for at least a week, if not to, like crispy, beautifully,

freshly, perfectly fresh. It is absolutely worth taking 10 minutes max to prep your greens, then to spend $4 every week on a head of lettuce that just gives you an extra chore of cleaning out a produce drawer because it's covered in decrepit lettuce remains. Okay. That 10 minutes of genius for lazy salad making for days of lunches and, yes, please, let's do that. 10 minutes of genius. That's all you need. Okay, that'll do it for today. Remember to check out the show notes at the lazy genius collective.com slash lazy slash salad.

And join me this Thursday on Instagram around 1215 Eastern. I am at the lazy genius and I'll answer all your salad questions. We can talk about combos like I said. And those conversations only last 24 hours on Instagram. But I'm now putting them on YouTube, usually within 24 to 48 hours of being live and then pop them on to the show notes for the episode. So if you miss it on Instagram or want to remember something a while later, you can access those conversations there. They're not there for every episode, but we're trying to make it happen for all of them from here

on out. So you can come join me Thursday to talk salad combos, or you can look at the show notes on late Thursday or Friday to watch and get some salad combo ideas. Okay, guys, thanks for listening and for sharing these episodes with your people. 30 minutes about salad. Who knew? I'm so glad to have you as fellow Lacey Geniuses. And until next time,

be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Bye, guys. Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that. More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life? Because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.