If you love salads, this is the book for you. There are a lot of ideas for salads to take with you to work, which means healthy, low cost and tasty eating – you can only win!
I must confess I'm not the person who likes to stick to a recipe word for word, I rather like substituting this for that and generally fooling around. (Works definitely better with salads then with baking!) But this book gives you a lot of ideas you can either follow or be creative with.
As it's winter and really cold outside I like my salads to be a little bit warm, no problem, there are a lot of salads you can make that way, or you can take some of the recipes and turn them into soup! You like Waldorf salad? Make some celery and apple soup with nuts for the crunch, lovely.
I'm really glad I found that book!

I really like the set-up of this cookbook - with one page showing all of the ingredients and the next the finished product. This is a great way to help people see and understand ingredients that they may not be familiar with.

The recipes are quite varied and look tasty.

The photography is well-done and interesting

We've all been in the isles of a supermarket, scanning the salads, looking to 'be good' then bypassing them all to hide a layered prawn salad in the bottom of the basket under a Men's Health magazine. This book allows you to avoid the entire embarrassment. Feel confident striding up and down the fruit and veg isles and dare the check out staff to judge you based on the pine nuts and rocket that move along the conveyor belt. Whip out your mason jar at work and watch your colleagues tip their Greggs pasty filling in the photocopier as they will be envious! Remember, to make two, as they're going to be shared on biblical scales.

Salad in a Jar: 68 Recipes for Salads and Dressings by Anna Helm Baxter

This is a fantastic resource to have. There are recipes on how to make salad dressings and many different salads. It gives you ideas to make a small salad or a big salad as a meal. The vegetables should always be dried before they go into the jar. The very bottom layer is always the dressing. The next layer would be any vegetable that would benefit from marinating in the dressing such as the many different kinds of onions. It says you can put cherry tomatoes either whole or cut in half. The next layer would be your hard crunchy vegetables such as celery, carrots and broccoli. If you are adding fruit it should be added the day that you plan on eating the salad. Croutons and nuts should be the top layer on a square of parchment paper. Those should also go in the same day.

The third layer would be heavier grains such as rice. The fourth layer would go in if you plan to eat the salad within 24 hours and that would be your proteins such as tuna or chicken, hard boiled eggs or your heavier cheeses such as feta or whatever heavier cheese you prefer. Of course your baby spinach leaves or lettuce would be one of the final layers.

What I love about the book is it talks about the Environmental Working Group (EWG) which each year makes a list of the fruits and vegetables that contain the highest amount of pesticides which are called "The Dirty Dozen Plus" Each of these items test higher in pesticide concentration than other produce so these should be bought organic. The EWG has also created a list of the "Clean Fifteen" that are least likely to contain pesticide residues and are okay to buy non organic.
DIRTY DOZEN: apples, celery, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, grapes, nectarines, peaches, potatoes, snap peas, spinach, strawberries, sweet peppers, hot peppers, kale/collards.
CLEAN FIFTEEN: asparagus, avocados, cabbage, cantaloupe, cauliflower, eggplant, grapefruit, kiwi. mangoes, onions, papayas, pineapples, sweet corn, sweet peas, sweet potatoes.
Thank you to Net Galley, Anna Helm Baxter and Ten Speed Press for my digital copy in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I enjoyed reading through the recipes in the book and looked forward to trying many of them. I have only tried a few at this time because, well you know, life happens! The ones I have tried were easy to put together, the ingredients were easy to get and they tasted good. I was afraid that some of them would not hold up well and as I have not tried those recipes yet, I am still not sure. Overall, this was a nice book and I would recommend it to those who are looking for yummy lunches and snacks on the go that can be prepped ahead of time.

Overall a nice concept! Would have to think about how to purchase some of the ingredients in smaller quantities other than freezing all the excess. Did not see anything to support medical opinions that certain recipes lower blood pressure or stabilize blood sugar. The statements appeared at the end of each recipe. I did not see any mention that the writer was a certified dietitian. Grain section at the beginning was confusing, lot of yes, no cover. Layers appeared out of numerical order.
The serving size, calories, and fat content... are not listed anywhere with the recipes. I would not purchase this book without these listed. Salad dressing can be very fattening and more than one serving is being added to each jar.