As you sit down with your elderly mom’s elderly care provider to help plan her meals, remember that May is National salad month. What a great time to celebrate salads! They used to be thought of as merely rabbit food or diet food but now salads are starting to get the place they deserve as a healthy and delicious meal or side dish.

There are so many ways to eat salads, and they don’t have to be mostly lettuce either. A salad can even have a base of a cooked grain. Couscous, quinoa and rice all make great salad starters after they’ve been cooked and cooled in the fridge. Add some chopped veggies, nuts, raisins, spices or whatever you like and top with a drizzle of olive oil or raspberry vinaigrette and you have the makings of a gourmet meal!

Here is a unique salad recipe that will deliver a fabulous dose of healthy vitamins to your mom’s diet. She should love this! If there are allergies to be considered, just make some substitutions. It’s all good.

Mediterranean Tuna Salad

2 cans tuna, drained and flaked

¼ cup Mayo with olive oil

¼ cup chopped pitted ripe olives

¼ cup drained and chopped roasted red peppers

1 Tbsp small capers, rinsed and drained

2 green onions, sliced

Mixed salad greens

6 slices whole grain bread

Combine all the salad ingredients except bread. Place them in a medium bowl to combine. Arrange a bed of greens and serve with the bread, plain or toasted.

This salad can also be served with a sprinkle of chopped nuts on top or a handful of raisins blended in. Salmon can be substituted for the tuna if desired.

There are so many salad variations to experiment with! You can peruse your cookbooks or browse online. It’s nice to have a color picture to look at while deciding on recipes. Salad recipe selection can be even more fun when you involve your mom. It’s a great activity to do together and she can see what the salads look like. She might get more excited about eating them!

Eating a well-rounded nutritious diet will help your mom stay stronger and healthier for a longer period of time. The more greens she can get, the better. With summer just around the corner, there will be an increasing number of fresh salad greens available. It’s also fun and easy to grow your own.

A great little activity to get your mom to participate in is growing a salad blend in a pot. Her caregiver can help her get started with this activity and now is the perfect time to begin. She just needs some seeds, a pot and some potting soil. As the salad grows she can snip off the leaves and eat them. Delicious and fun all wrapped up into one!