BLT and Prawn & Mango Salad

A delicious spin on the classic BLT but without any carbs that makes it diet and celiac friendly. Couple this with a summer salad filled with prawn and fresh mango. All served in mason jars for easy serving at picnics or at work.

These recipes are brought to you by Praise Deli Style Dressings

It feels almost redundant to say this, but my friends and I love eating out. It's what we centre our social life on and we can talk for hours about our best meals or favourite snack foods or what we've eaten and we love nothing more than trying as many places as possible, sometimes even on the same night. However there are times when a meal leaves us so disappointed that we flee before we can choose dessert.

A couple of weeks ago we visited a restaurant. It seemed to have everything - food critics lauded the meal and the chef. Service was nice but the food, well it ranged from the good (one item) to the bad i.e. we could have done better at home, to the ugly. The dishes that thrilled the critics left us completely nonplussed as did the dining room which was lauded and debated by the same critics. It felt like a culinary case of the Emperor's New Clothes and when they asked us whether we would like dessert it was a tacit agreement that we would decline and we fled into the night.

Sometimes all the trickery in a meal doesn't beat a good picnic on the grass. And given how early the summer weather has started we are unfurling the picnic blanket much more often now. I have a tendency to pack things that are easy to eat - pastries and pies and things like that but they're not really the healthiest items. So I've started packing salads.

Salads in jars are not new at all but it really is a practical way to transport a salad. You keep it in the jar which provides a tighter seal than cling film on a bowl and then empty it out onto a serving plate and dress it when you arrive on your patch of grass or Christmas table. For these I used the Praise Deli Style dressings. My two favourite flavours are the Creamy Roasted Garlic which reminds me of a garlic aioli crossed with a ranch dressing (that I like so much I'll keep buying it) and the Avocado & Roasted Garlic. They come in small plastic bottles so they are easy to take on a picnic or for work lunches and contain no artificial flavours.

The two salads that I thought that I would share are two classics but in a different way. The first is a club sandwich salad with poached chicken, bacon, tomato, cucumber, egg and lettuce that I paired with the Praise Creamy Roasted Garlic dressing. The second is one that you get a lot of at Christmas lunches - a prawn and mango salad with avocado and lettuce. I paired this with the Praise Avocado & Roasted Garlic dressing. Each recipe below makes enough for one generous serve but feel free to double, triple or quadruple this according to how many you are feeding!

So tell me Dear Reader, are you often disappointed in meals when you eat out? Where was the last meal that you ate out and what did you think of it? And do you bring your lunch to work and if so, what is it usually?

Club Sandwich Salad

Makes 1 jar of salad that serves 1 person, adjust quantities for additional people

• 1 cup cos or iceberg salad leaves, thinly sliced
• 1/2 poached chicken breast
• 2 rashers grilled streaky bacon
• 1/2 cucumber, sliced diagonally
• 1 tomato, thinly sliced
• 1 boiled egg
• Praise Deli Style Creamy Roasted Garlic Dressing

Step 1 - Layer all of the elements, you can do it in whatever order you like and you can fill the jar up to the brim with salad. Close and refrigerated and dress when you eat it.

Prawn and Mango Salad

Makes 1 jar of salad that serves 1 person, adjust quantities for additional people

• 1 cup cos or iceberg salad leaves, thinly sliced
• 1/2 an avocado, sliced and fanned
• 6 prawns, peeled
• 1/4 cup fresh mango chunks
• 1/8 red onion, peeled and thinly sliced
• Praise Deli Style Creamy Roasted Garlic Dressing

Step 1 - Layer all of the elements, you can do it in whatever order you like and you can fill the jar up to the brim with salad. Close and refrigerated and dress when you eat it.