As the new year has dawned, many of us who made resolutions will have included ones focussing on health and nutrition, including chez Season’s Eatings. Combining the copious amounts of leftover turkey (a lean meat) from Christmas, currently in the deep freeze, and a resolution to eat healthier and get back on track with the gym routine, we have a multitude of healthy recipes ideas to kick off 2016.

The first of these being a delicious turkey and quinoa salad at the moment, both of which are high in protein and low in fat, so ideal for a post-workout meal. Our recipe was originally based on a superfood salad by Jamie Oliver recipe that we have adapted. You can batch-cook the quinoa and keep it in the fridge so that the salad can be made more quickly (handy for an immediate post-gym lunch), else just cook the quinoa following the packet instructions. In fact, we tend to go one step further and batch make the salad so that we can have the first portion straight after the gym and take the remaining as lunches during the week along with a small portion of the dressing, to add just before eating.

Cooking time: (for the quinoa) 10 minutes

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

• 60g quinoa (cooked)
• handful of shredded turkey breast
• ¼ cucumber
• ½ small iceberg lettuce
• ½ carrot
• ½ apple
• handful of fresh mint
• handful of baby spinach
• 1 tomato
• 1 lime
• ½ punnet of cress
• 1 tbsp natural yoghurt
• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Recipe:

1. Roughly chop the cucumber, lettuce, carrot, apple and tomato and place in a bowl. Tear over the mint leaves, spinach and cress, and give a good spritz of lime, then gently toss together.
2. The dressing is superbly simple to make, simply mix together a tablespoon of the yoghurt, olive oil and a good squeeze of fresh lime juice and quickly stir together.   
3. Finally mix in the quinoa and turkey into the salad, then dress (if eating straight away) and check if a final spritz of lime is needed.
4. Enjoy guilt-free with a cup of peppermint tea or, if you’re inclined, simply in the knowledge that as you’ve had a super salad for lunch you could potentially justify a small slice of cake during the late afternoon slump.