Mason jar salads: healthful meal prepping, quick and easy!

I'm obsessed with easy-to-make, healthful mason jar salads! It's the best way to keep your greens from getting soggy with dressing on them, since the dressing stays on the bottom.

These salads will stay fresh in your fridge for up to a week, although I recommend consuming them more quickly if you do choose to make them with a soft cheese, like I did in this video.

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When you make a mason jar salad, here are some guidelines:

Step #1. Put dressing on the bottom
Step #2. Add hard veggies and fruit (I used zucchini and baby beets, but other good ones are carrots, peppers, onions and celery)
Step #3. Add beans and legumes, you could also throw in grains/quinoa
Step #4. Add soft veggies and fruit such as avocado, tomato, mushroom
Step #5. Stuff your greens on top! Pack it in there!
Step #6. Top with nuts and seeds, and sometimes I throw in some bacon bits and/or green onions

When you're ready to eat your salad, if you have a runny-type dressing like the first salad I made in the video, you can just shake it up then dump it all on a plate. However, if you have a creamier dressing like the second salad I show here, then you may have to scrape the bottom out with your fork and spread the dressing around.

Have you ever tried making a mason jar salad? If so, what is your favorite recipe? Let me know in your comments below!

2-ingredient easy coconut cake! (4 ingredients iced)

I got on a horn and decided that, by golly, I was going to bake a cake. So I whipped open my cookbook from Our Lady of Fatima Church in Monroe, LA (where I used to be the organist) and consulted some recipes. 

Is it just me, or do church cookbooks have better recipes?! #SoCountry

The coconut cake recipe that I had all the ingredients for only called for four total ingredients, with just two for the cake itself. Sounded like it matched my level of culinary expertise.

Box of cake mix + can of coconut milk = cake

Container of Cool Whip + coconut flakes = frosting

Oh, and let us have a sad throwback shout-out to the coconuts left over from a friend's brunch, when we all discovered that her backyard palm tree was overflowing with the goodies -- too bad we've let them go to rot!

This is why we can't have nice things

Anyway, forging ahead with my recipe... you blend a box of cake mix with a can of coconut milk. 

I can work that mixer, ya heard?!

Then you bake it at 350 degrees for 25 minutes... and out comes a delicious, perfect cake!

You're supposed to let it fully cool, but unfortunately I was impatient and wanted to EAT IT. So I stuck it in the freezer, which helped but didn't fully cool it since I only left it in there for 10 minutes. #TimeToFeedTheFatKid

 Top it with Cool Whip and coconut flakes to dress it up...

Viola!!!

This is the easiest-ever coconut cake recipe! I ended up sharing mine with my neighbor Michelle. If you knew how much of this cake I ate by myself tonight... *shakes head* It's bad juju. But the recipe is good!!! YUMMY!