It isn’t the lettuce that puts you off salad. It’s that silly moment of getting out the oil, the vinegar and the salt, guessing the amounts and ending up with something bland. It’s thirty seconds, but they’re the thirty seconds that nudge you towards having something else for dinner.
The answer fits in a small glass jar: olive oil, vinegar, a teaspoon of mustard and salt. Lid on, shake, and into the fridge door. It keeps for days, and the mustard stops it separating so quickly.
Did you know? A study at Iowa State University measured what the body absorbed from the same salad depending on the dressing: with fat, far more carotenoids were absorbed — the pigments in tomatoes, carrots and green leaves — than with a fat-free dressing. That drizzle of oil isn’t a guilty pleasure: it’s part of the dish.
From then on, salad stops being a project. Open, pour, done. And with the friction gone, vegetables go from ‘I should’ to ‘I fancy it’, which is exactly the shift we’re after.
Start today: fill a small jar with dressing and keep it in the fridge. Your next salad will practically make itself.