The Best Way To Prep Your Leafy Greens So They Last at Least 7 Days (video) + Creamy Curry Dressing
By Molly Patrick
Apr 22, 2017,
All unprocessed plant foods play an important role in your life and your health, and leafy greens pack an extra special healthy punch. The abundance of nutrients found in all leafy greens warrants them a solid spot in your daily routine, just like brushing your teeth, reminding yourself how loved you are, and playing with your fur baby (or regular baby if that’s what you have going on).
Here’s the deal.
How you feel, how you look, how many medications you’re on and how healthy you are overall has a lot to do with the nutrient density of your diet.
Nutrient density refers to how many nutrients a particular food has per calorie. For example, a donut has lots of calories and very few (if any) nutrients. A bowl of blueberries on the other hand has few calories and a ton of nutrients. So blueberries are nutrient dense and donuts are nutrient void. Easy enough.
For optimal health and a healthy weight, the majority of what we eat needs to have more nutrients than calories.
Molly Patrick
Given this calculation, leafy greens are the most nutrient dense plant foods on the planet because they are super low in calories and packed with nutrients.
Just to give you an idea:
- Chicken has about 1,085 calories per pound.
- Oil (all kinds – even coconut oil) has 4,002 calories per pound.
- Fish has about 933 calories per pound.
By comparison, leafy greens have about 100 calories per pound.
And to most people’s surprise, the majority of those calories come from protein.
The nutrients in leafy greens are responsible for all kinds of good stuff, including boosting immune function, protecting blood vessels, vision protection, protection from type 2 diabetes, removing carcinogens, cancer protection, reducing inflammation and neutralizing oxidative stress.
Not only are leafy greens jam packed with phytochemicals and antioxidants, they are also rich in calcium and folate. They even contain small amounts of omega-3 fatty acids.
Leafy greens are kind of like Beyoncé – the total package.
So eating these green powerhouses should be at the top of your priority list on the daily. Here’s the problem. Most people go to the grocery store and load up on greens with the awesome intention of eating them throughout the week. Then they get home from the grocery, put the greens in their fridge, and there they sit. All. Week. Long.
Until they get tossed out because they got slimy and went bad before they were used.
I have a simple solution that takes just a bit of time and will ensure that you actually eat those badass mothers every week instead of tossing them out. All you have to do is thoroughly wash and dry your greens once a week. That’s it. And to help you do that, I made a video, showing you my process for washing and drying greens. I do this every single week. On the rare occasion I don’t do it, I don’t eat as many greens throughout the week. It’s as predictable as that.
There are two people in my house and the two of us go through about 5 bunches of greens a week and about 2 heads of lettuce. When I follow this method, all of my greens stay perfectly fresh for a full week. They would likely stay good for longer, but I always use them up before I have the opportunity to find out.
Watch the video below to find out exactly how to handle your greens like a plant based boss.
And as a reminder, my weekly Plant Fueled Meal Plans have different leafy greens each week with new and exciting ways to use them.
Do you have a specific way you deal with your greens that’s been effective for you? Talk to me in the comments below.
Today’s dressing is perfect for drizzling over chopped up raw greens, massaging in the goodness like a Swedish masseuse and then chowing the hell down.
Ingredients
- 3 dried dates pit taken out and simmered in water for about 10 minutes (2 dates if they are jumbo)
- ¼ cup tahini 70g
- 1 teaspoon curry powder
- 1 garlic clove peeled and left whole
- 1 teaspoon peeled and grated ginger
- ¼ teaspoon sea salt
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- ½ cup water 120ml
Instructions
- Drain and discard the date water and place the dates into your blender, along with the tahini, curry powder, garlic clove, ginger, salt and water and blend until completely smooth.
Wishing you a happy week. May it be filled with taking extra steps to see that your body is well looked after.
Xo
Molly
31 Comments
Leave a Comment
You may also enjoy...
New? Download your free Beginner's Guide and start the most delicious and rewarding journey of your life, fueled by plants.
Stop junk food cravings and glow from the inside out with our easy-to-follow program. Give me the juicy details.
Our mouthgasmic plant-based meal plans are designed around batch cooking. Get your free Batching Handbook and dive in.
Love the food that loves you back
Get instant access to thousands of plant-based recipes and meal plans, no credit card or perfection required.
You showed what you do with the leafy greens, but how do you store the lettuce once it’s washed? Romaine in whole heads? Chopped? Just separate all the leaves? And what do you put it into – another bowl?
Hi Kerry,
I store the lettuce in a separate bowl and I leave the leaves whole, unless they are huge and then I cut them in half.
I hope this helps!
xo
Molly
How do you store your cilantro and parsley? I seem to have tried every trick and they still always go bad for me. Thanks.
Hi Tammy, I wash, spin dry and store each in its own 1 quart size Ziploc bag (I wash, dry and reuse these bags) in the middle of my fridge, which I’ve designated as my greens storage shelving (lower is too cold). Parsley and cilantro last up to a week and sometimes longer. Hope that helps. ~Karen
Hi where did u get your bowls you are using in the video? Can you send a link?
Hi Carol,
Here is the link to the bowls that Molly used in the video
https://amzn.to/2RESCNC
When I click on the link it takes me to a Motorola power cord replacement adapter. Do you have the brand name for the bowls? Thanks!
Hi Amy, You can search for Amazon for the style of bowl too. I have a different version that I purchased from a big box store. The type of bowl is melamine with a lid. ~Karen
I saw a page with links to all of the tools Molly uses when I was browsing before joining…now I can’t find it again. Can you link it here? Thx!
Hi Dawn! There are actually 2 blog posts that contain the tools Molly can’t live without. I will add them below. Hope this helps!
https://cleanfooddirtygirl.com/one-of-many-nicknames-kitchen-tools-cant-live-without/
https://cleanfooddirtygirl.com/kitchen-tools-cant-live-without-oil-pt-2-free-refried-beans-instant-pot/
Thanks!
Di you ever used a bit of vinegar in your wash water for added “umph” to cleaning? I try to buy as much organic as very possible, but that is more challenging than one might expect on a small pacific island. Generally what I can get commercially organic and some recent publications have indicated that different CLASSES of pesticides are still allowed under USDA guidelines 🙁 Of course a bit concerning. What are your thoughts?
Hi Isha, a bit of vinegar will definitely help in washing produce, especially in killing any pathogens that might be on it. Not sure how effective it would be for removing pesticides/herbicides, but it can’t hurt!
xo
Meghann
Team Dirty Girl
I still have kids at home and a husband to feed and we eat salad at least 5 nights a week. We make a giant bowl of salad with two kinds of greens, red onions, red cabbage, and shredded carrots. What we don’t eat for the first night’s dinner goes in gallon ziplock bags that I have stabbed to make little air holes…this seems to really help in keeping it fresh while keeping it from getting slimy. We eat the salad as is or use it as a base for a different type of salad (for example, we had taco salad tonight….I just added beans, tomatoes, corn, lime wedge, and avocado to change the flavor profile as well as made a southwestern vinagarette)
Thanks for the great primer on keeping leafy greens fresh. This will definitely help me incorporate more of them into my wfpb diet as greens are my biggest challenge. Where can I find the info on the bowls you were using for rinsing and storage?
Hi Carissa, these are the bowls that Molly uses. 😉
xo
Meghann
Team Dirty Girl
This is awesome! We are constantly buying too much lettuce and never get through it all before the wilting starts. We’ll have to give this a try!
Hi Deb – I hope you keep us posted over in our private Facebook group!
xo
Molly
Wow This Is great recipe.I love Your Way of making Recipe.I am going to make this recipe for my family now.
Thank you so much for this absolutely delicious creamy sauce. I could’t take my spoon out of it and it was almost gone even before it reached the salad.
Did you ever try this with avocados? I had it for breakfast with an avocado apricot salad with fresh mint and cilantro. Just heavenly yummy!
This is one of the best dressings I ever made.
This is freaking delicious!
Hi from Jeffreys Bay South Africa? to keep herbs fresh I wash them and shake off excess water then I store them in a mason jar, lid on , in the fridge. They last at least 2 weeks like that.
Hi Jenny – Great tip! Thanks for stopping by. ~Karen
The creamy curry dressing is INCREDIBLE!!
So glad you enjoyed it!
Hi, I was completely blown away when you showed how many greens you use in a week. Do most of those go in recipes, or is it mostly salads and smoothies and improv things? I would love to go through that many greens in a week.
You mentioned keeping the dark leafy greens in the same bowl, is that because you tend to use them for the same thing? Or are they pretty easy to separate when you leave the leaves 😉 larger? Thanks in advance for the answers.
Hi Lauren! Molly uses them in smoothies, salads, batching, nightly meals. She also adds greens to the soups from the meal plans when she heats them up.
She doesn’t separate the greens for convenience and just uses handfuls of whatever she gets when she’s ready for them. There hasn’t been as much variety in the last couple months so right now it’s mainly kale and bok choy. 🙂
This dressing is so amazing, I have been known to eat salad 3x in a day just because I wanted the dressing!! lol
This dressing is absolutely delicious! I could have eaten the whole thing with a spoon right from the blender! Our whole group loved it. After sitting in the fridge, it was a bit thick, so I added a tad more water to thin it out. This recipe will become a regular for me, but next time I will need to double it. 🙂
I’d say triple it. We’re glad you loved the dressing!
This method for cleaning lettuce didn’t work very well for me. I read this on google. Wash and spin dry your lettuce. Keep the lettuce in the perforated inner spinner container (because it needs air); then place a damp paper towel on top of the lettuce (because it needs a little moisture) and store in fridge. If paper towel dries out, moisten it again, and place it over the lettuce. This worked wonders for me.