Oh happy (salad) days !

Sainsburys recently got in touch to ask if we'd like to take part in their salad challenge. After seeing a massive upturn in sales of vegetables with avocado (147%), asparagus spears (118%), broccoli (40%), courgettes (30%) and bunched beetroot (25%) leading the way, they are on a mission to inspire the nation to be more creative with their vegetables. They have teamed up with food artist Amber Locke, who has over 100k followers on Instagram as rawveganblonde, to create some gorgeous summer salads such as the one above.

Well, here's our effort. We used heart-shaped cookie cutters to fill with chopped and shredded vegetables (roasted beetroot, raw grated carrot, ...) then continued the pattern with strips of cucumber (I had originally planned to recreate black treacle glazed courgettes but ran out of time), cherry tomatoes and sweetcorn. Using a small cookie cutter on slices of cucumber gave the final finishing touch.

It went down very well with the Madhouse kids, proving once again that if you make an effort with the presentation, they'll eat anything and love it !

Disclosure : We received a shopping voucher for ingredients, to take part in the challenge.