Zupas: a tasty salad place worth a visit

Since Chicago-area McDonald’s decided to drop salads this year, I’ve been searching for alternatives that are both tasty and well-priced. My quest took me to a northern Chicago suburb, Deerfield, and a place called Cafe Zupas.

Zupas apparently is a chain, you can check its website for locations. Like other national salad places, it offers a range of pre-determined salads or you can create your own, which is what I did.

*Cafe Zupas in Deerfield, Il. It was very clean and everyone was helpful in preparing my salad*.

The create-your-own comes with a protein (I picked chicken) and five toppings. The assortment was such that I got two helpings of tomatoes, there wasn’t a lot else that appealed to me. I also got cucumbers, cranberries and strawberries.

The place also didn’t have plain oil and vinegar, surprising and a little disappointing. It does have some low-salt dressing options, check its nutrition page before you go.

The size of the salad was larger than other salad places and the price, a little over $10, was in line with what two McDonald salads would cost me.

While I’d like to see oil and vinegar and more topping choices, I still give Zupas a thumbs up. One especially nice feature, a free chocolate-covered strawberry comes with every meal.

March 7, 2023 0

A five-ingredient salad option you may want to modify to cut salt

Salads are my go-to lunch most days of the week, so I’m always looking for new ideas to brighten up my daily lettuce. So how could I not read a story headlined, I wasn’t a salad lover until I tried this recipe?

It turns out the actual salad is called Fall Chopped Salad with Spinach, Butternut Squash, Apples & Cheddar on Eatingwell.com.

Spinach is the main ingredient along with an apple, butternut squash and even maple syrup.

One of my salads with salmon, fat-free feta, mushrooms, tomatoes and a variety of lettuce types.

The full ingredient list:

1 small (1 1/2 pounds) butternut squash, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch dice (about 4 cups)
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
½ teaspoon salt, divided
½ teaspoon ground pepper, divided
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon maple syrup
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
8 cups packed baby spinach, roughly chopped
1 medium Honeycrisp apple, diced
½ cup diced sharp Cheddar cheese
½ cup toasted chopped pecans

I’d leave out the pecans, the salt, maybe the squash and certainly the syrup to cut the sugar. I’d also add some spring mix lettuce to flesh it out a bit. The apple might be a nice touch.

If you try it, let me know what you think of it.

February 20, 2023 1

2023 search for a fast-food salad — Wendy’s offers one option

With salads off the menu at Chicago-area McDonald’s in 2023, I’ve started looking elsewhere for a fast-food salad that’s not high in fat, salt and sugar. My first stop is Wendy’s, which offers four different salads.

Two of them include main ingredients I don’t eat — the southwest avocado salad (avocado does terrible things to my stomach) and the apple pecan salad (no nuts for me either.) There’s a taco salad too, but beans also don’t do it for me and that one just seems like too much fat and salt from cheese to even consider.

So I tried the fourth, the parmesan Caesar salad which comes with a grilled chicken breast much like McDonald’s once served on its pre-Pandemic salads.

If you order it as described, it has 790 mgs of sodium in the salad itself and another 320 mgs in the dressing. That’s half a day’s sodium consumption for the average person and about all I try to eat because of my heart issues.

So I skipped the dressing, bringing my own oil and vinegar, and I omit the parmesan chips. That gets the sodium down to 650 mgs.

The Wendy’s app does show you real-time nutrition information as you change what you want on your salad, a handy feature.

Continue reading →

February 4, 2023 0

McDonald salads 2023 — gone, gone, gone

*Bye, bye McDonald’s salads. Bye, bye McDonald’s.*

My most-read post last year was about McDonald’s bringing back salads in some locations after killing them during the pandemic. But it looks like the return of McDonald’s salads is over. A search through the Northern suburbs of Chicago the past two weeks (via the McDonald’s app) shows no outlets with salads on their menus in 2023.

I sent a note to McDonald’s customer service and got back a form reply saying salads are no longer part of the national menu and it’s now up to individual franchise holders whether they offer them. I find only a little truth in that since suppliers have to be found for them and I don’t see corporate letting individual outlets go rogue on finding suppliers. Corporate has decided to walk away from any pretense of having a healthy menu option.

That means there is now nothing even remotely healthy on McDonald’s menu and I can no longer frequent them. My favorite McDonald’s in the suburb of Winnetka was like my away-from-home office since I retired in 2015.

I’d go there twice a week and everyone on staff knew me and treated me wonderfully. I will miss them tremendously, but sadly McDonald’s now, just like Trader Joe’s, too is dead to me if I want to keep to my heart-healthy diet.

I’m going to test a Wendy’s salad to see how they measure up but looking at their nutritional information, they mostly seem loaded with salt. The same is true for Panera salads. I’ve had salads at Culver’s but found them bland in the past, it might be time to test them again as well.

January 25, 2023 2

5 tips to make your lunch salad more than just lettuce

I eat salad for lunch almost daily. That started back in 2012 when a nutritionist told me lettuce was basically all I could eat because of my heart issues. She tossed out five pages of my favorite foods I’d brought to show her as all too high in salt, fat and sugar.

MY salad ingredients and the final product

Eating salad every day can get boring fast, lettuce is little more than water in a green form, after all. So, over the years, I’ve come up with some ways to make my lunch salad more than just lettuce with olive oil and vinegar.

The chief hacks I use:

Continue reading →

September 29, 2021 1

First salad of 2020…and so it begins

The start of any year is notorious for people resolving to lose some weight. Indeed, all the major weight-loss programs already are running ads to attract new clients this time of year.

Like millions of others, I’m resolving to drop some pounds this year too. But I don’t use any commercial diet plans. Rather, I merely need to return to what I was eating after having my first angioplasty in 2012.

Following that surgery, I dropped 25 pounds by cutting out everything I enjoyed — red meat, candy, cookies, doughnuts, cake, rich, creamy ethnic foods (think most things from Europe), high-salt ethnic foods (think anything from Asia).

Sadly, after three years of that, I began slipping back, mainly with M&Ms and cream-filled doughnuts, until, in 2017, I was forced to have a second angioplasty to open yet another blocked artery.

That second surgery really had me questioning whether changing my diet had any impact on my artery-health, since it seemed like the answer was a resounding no.

So for the past two years, I’ve been eating much more junk food than before and have gained back that 25 pounds I lost. That officially makes me a fat old man these days and I don’t like that image. So I’m starting all over again.

Here’s today’s lunch salad which I made at home. Restaurant salads are normally load with salt, fat and sugar, avoid them or strip them down to their basics if you must eat one.

I try to add as much as possible to the basic spring greens lettuce mix to give the salad some texture. Here’s a look at ingredients before I built the salad. The only thing missing in this photo is the turkey I put on. That’s leftover from our low-salt Christmas turkey.

The feta cheese is fat-free and the olives (in that black liquid) are low-salt. The beets are sold at Costco, they’re sealed and shelf-stable, not the jarred ones that are loaded with salt.

The mushrooms, tomatoes, cucumbers and even the lettuce mix were on sale at a local supermarket. Eating healthy is expensive, so always shop the sales each week to find deals.

I topped all this with olive oil (a so-called good fat) and balsamic vinegar.

Happy 2020 eating everyone!!!

January 2, 2020 1

A quick spring salad — radicchio and asparagus give it variety

The trick to keep salads from getting boring for those of us who eat a lot of them is to mix up the variety of items to add to the basic lettuce. This salad, using bibb lettuce along with radicchio, and asparagus, popped up recently in a Cooking Light email I receive and I thought it sounded worth sharing.

Ingredients are simple and easy to prepare (leave out the salt as we usually advise):

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons honey
~~1/4 teaspoon kosher salt~~ (who needs this)
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 cups thinly sliced radicchio
1 cup diagonally sliced asparagus
1 head Bibb lettuce, leaves separated and torn (about 6 oz.)

Continue reading “A quick spring salad — radicchio and asparagus give it variety” →

March 8, 2019 0

Be salad smart when eating out

See the word salad on a menu and you assume it’s got to be the healthiest thing on there, right? Wrong, unfortunately. Restaurants love to load up salads with any and every unhealthy thing, like fried foods, to destroy the basic salad.

You're left with a relatively healthy salad with chicken. — You’re left with a relatively healthy salad with chicken.

WebMD recently ran this guide on what to avoid in restaurant salads. Basics you should already kn0w — avoid creamy dressings, croutons and lots of cheese on a salad, they’re all fat bombs waiting to destroy your insides.

Olive oil and vinegar is the best dressing option. I now carry my own with me because I’m continually surprised how many places don;t offer that as an option.

Sadly, one option I do like, dried cranberries, is on the bad list here because of the amount fo sugar in dried fruit. Bye cranberries. Continue reading “Be salad smart when eating out” →

October 16, 2018 0

Lettuce recalls are everywhere this summer, take care

After my first stent was put in back in 2012, the hospital nutritionist I consulted with basically told me the only thing I could eat for lunch was lettuce.

This is what a Costco food court Caesar salad looks like when you unwrap it, a giant cup of fat-filled Caesar dressing and a mound of high-salt, high-fat grated cheese — Salads like this Costco one have been off my menu this summer because of recall after recall.

So lunch salads have pretty much become my daily routine. But not this summer. Lettuce recalls have been popping up at both places to eat out like McDonald’s and food retailers like Trader Joe’s and Kroger. Continue reading “Lettuce recalls are everywhere this summer, take care” →

August 2, 2018 0

A funky summer take on a cucumber salad

Cucumber salads are a favorite of mine, I’ve written about cucumber with tomatoes and fennel, among other combos. But recently I saw a new take on a cucumber salad from Bon Apettit, a cucumber and peach salad.

My grilled artichoke, along with corn, cucumber salad and tomato salad. — My cucumber salad, maybe next time I’ll add some peaches.

Fresh peaches are a wonderful summer treat, why not combine them with cucumbers for something different? “The combination of sweet, fragrant peaches and crunchy, hydrating cucumbers works weirdly well,” writes Andy Baraghani in Bon Apettit. The recipe is inspired by street vendor offerings he saw in Mexico, he explains. So his recipe involves hot sauce and chiles. Continue reading “A funky summer take on a cucumber salad” →

August 1, 2016 1

Tag: salads