Cherry tomatoes grow extremely easily in medium light, they don't take a lot of care, and they make a TON of little tomatoes. You'll probably have far more tomatoes than you can eat, and will be pawning them off on family and friends. It's definitely worth it to put a pot on your back porch or even near a sunny window. Give it a try!
1/2 lb bacon
2 pints cherry tomatoes, halved
1 cucumber, peeled & diced
2 tsp garlic salt
1 tsp basil
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/4 c red wine vinegar
1/3 c olive oil
Begin by cooking up the bacon either in a skillet or in your microwave. When it's nice and crisp, chop it into bite-sized pieces. Now mix that in with the tomatoes and cucumber pieces. Mix in the garlic salt, basil and pepper. Separately, mix the vinegar and oil together, and pour over the top.
Enjoy! This recipe is SUPER fast and it provides both protein as well as a nice mix of nutrients. If you don't like bacon, of course, feel free to substitute in grilled chicken, or just to leave it meatless.
Depending on how large you make your servings, this could be small salads for 4 people or dinner sized salads for 2 people. The tomato is about 12g for the entire salad, while the cucumber is 3g. The rest of the mix is pretty much zero carb. So divide the 15g for the salad up amongst how many servings you have made to determine how much each person eats.
If you want to fill out the salad for more people, without raising to a higher carb count, lettuce is always the answer. Lettuce is only 0.5g per half cup so you could give every person a full half cup of lettice in their salad without very much carb increase at all.
A real key for a tasty salad is fresh ingredients. When you eat a salad, the whole flavor is in those raw items you are eating - not in a sauce or other strong flavor. Make sure the tomatoes and cukes are nice and fresh!
Lisa Shea's Library of Low Carb Books
