Southwest Chopped Salad Kit

I wish we had a Wegmans in Manhattan.

I feel like I've said that every time we've made something in the past week or so that came from Wegmans. Not only is it an enjoyable store to shop at, with better prices than most of our city grocery stores, but they also have great "convenience" products like salad kits and cleaned & cut produce that are high quality and don't cost a fortune.

I forgot to take a picture of the bag, so here's the kit from the Wegmans site (source)

I love their salad kits. They have a bunch of them - Asian, garden, BBQ and Southwest - but I can only eat two of those because I sadly can't eat broccoli (without consequences). We broke open our Southwest chopped salad kit this week, and it was a perfect side dish for a mere $3 (total, not per person). Might it have cost a little less to have bought each ingredient on its own and chopped it up ourselves? Possibly. But it would also take much longer to prepare than a few minutes and we would be "paying" much more than that cost difference with our time.

Salad along with panko-breaded oven-baked chicken from Costco

The Southwest chopped salad kit has green cabbage, romaine lettuce, carrots, pumpkin seeds, green onions, tortilla strips and fresh cilantro, with a Southwest ranch yogurt dressing. We've tried salad kits from many competitors and most of those are just lettuce (largely iceberg) with maybe some shaved carrots or dried fruit or lots of chips. Unlike those lackluster kits, this Wegmans salad was a complete salad with lots of good ingredients and it comes chopped (my personal preference for all salads). All the vegetables were fresh and crisp, the dressing had a great flavor and worked perfectly with the ingredients, and the salad was delicious. I even liked the way the tortilla strips mixed in to the salad, and I really dislike salads with tortilla strips.

We've been cooking more lately and I do love making meals from scratch, but sometimes you just need something quick, easy and healthy. These salad kits make that so much easier. If only Wegmans were closer and we could always have these on hand...