Between stress, sitting, hunching and poor choices re: mindless snacking, office life is like a sniper assassin with our physical prime in its crosshairs. So we’ve vowed to mark 2015 as the year we bring a healthy lunch to work daily—because if birthday cupcakes and Friday beer are going to happen, then mason jars of kale are going to happen, too.
And who better to approach for some healthy-lunch tips than Christina Culver of Vancouver’s Culver City Salads food truck?
"I started the company because I was cooking for my friends all the time and they began to offer to pay me to bring them lunch at work," says the longtime (mostly) vegan, who sells fresh, local, incredibly healthy salads to hundreds daily. We nabbed Culver’s excellent dressing recipe, plus some advice on how to prep primo take-to-work lunches.
Christina’s Top DIY Salad Tips:
"It’s all about pre-prep. People forget their blenders and food processors come with that one disc attachment – it’s for shredding veggies! You can ribbon kale and brussel sprouts quickly, and they keep for three, four days."
"A mix of raw and cooked things is easier to digest than just raw." (Christina likes roasted yams, kimchi for that macro-tang, and brown rice vermicelli).
"Add some protein, like quinoa. People always ask which salads will keep them full: quinoa, and anything with legumes (which you can buy dry and soak in a 1/2 ratio) nuts and seeds will keep you going for hours."
"Mason jars are more than just hip, they actually work really well because you can pack a lot in, and when you upturn it all, it mixes itself."
"People ask me how many calories a vegan lunch salad has. I’m just like, look, it’s a vegan lunch salad." (aka don’t sweat it, you’re doing great).
Christina’s Drinkable Salad Dressing Recipe:
Here’s a super clean dressing recipe I came up with, so balanced with healthy goodness that you’ll be able to skip your daily supplements – some of my friends have even confessed to drinking it. I put it on everything!
Using only organic ingredients is always the best of course, but understandably it’s more challenging for some (especially us Vancouverites). If looking to cut costs I’d strongly recommend sticking with organic miso. Your body will thank you!
1/4 cup organic miso paste (I like the dark AKA miso by Amano organic miso)
1/2 cup organic apple cider vinegar
1 cup water
2 Tbsp organic tamari
Juice and zest from 1 organic lemon
1 garlic clove
2tbsp organic chia seeds
Fresh ground pepper to taste
1/2 cup organic tahini
1/2 cup organic basil
Combine everything but the tahini and basil in a blender. Once emulsified, add the tahini and blend until smooth (a few more minutes), then lastly, chuck in the basil and pulse the blender a few times until the basil is chopped up but not totally blended in. Drizzle on your salad and enjoy! Pour remaining dressing into a jar and refrigerate. It will be good for at least one month. If you don’t feel like making the dressing from scratch no problem; we sell bottles of it off of our foodtruck and are hoping to get it into other retail locations this year, so keep an eye out!
DIY work lunch, made healthy and easy. —Adrienne Matei
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