You don’t really need me to tell you how to eat a salad for supper – make salad, eat salad, done. But if you don’t want to be rummaging through the cupboards eating cereal out of the box in a couple of hours, here are some tips.

1. Make it a huge salad. Remember how Elaine from Seinfeld wanted a Big Salad from Reggie’s and had to explain what it was – “It’s a salad, only bigger, with lots of stuff in it.”? Well, your salad better be bigger than a Big Salad.
2. Include a large portion of complex carbohydrates. It doesn’t need to be in the salad, over or under is just fine. In the salad pictured above there are perfect no-oil roasted potatoes hiding underneath. Sweet potatoes, brown rice, wheat berries, quinoa, whatever strikes your fancy will work here.
3. Dress that salad in something creamy. You’ll find a nut or seed based dressing to be very satisfying. If you are following Dr. Esselstyn’s low fat diet, make sure you eat enough of the carbs so you’re not hungry in a little while.
4. Include lots of different ingredients. Use salad greens and cruciferous greens (chop them small if they are strongly flavoured), colourful raw veggies like peppers, carrots, onions, tomatoes, and cucumbers, legumes like chickpeas, lentils, black beans or frozen peas, frozen corn, nuts and seeds, fruit, fresh or dried, leftover cooked veggies and whatever strikes your fancy out of the fridge.

Now that’s a supper salad!