Good Natured Salads - Review

Despite what the weather would have you believe, the calendar definitely says it's summer at the moment.  And when summertime rolls around, then the healthy food comes out.

The kind people at Good Natured Salad offered me the chance to try out some of their salad range, so I popped to the shops, and came back with a punnet of Tantalising Baby Plum Tomatoes & a Cool Cucumber.  The range also includes Perfect Peppers, , Awesome Aubergines and vine tomatoes, but they didn't stock them at my store.

Good Natured don't use pesticides, they use good bugs to keep the bad bugs away, which means that their veggies are pesticide residue free, and the way nature intended.  The natural theme was kept going with the tomato punnet being made from cardboard (and easily recycled), rather than the more usual plastic.

Now, while my thoughts may turn to salad, I'm a carbosaurus at heart.  No Carbs, No Comment.  So my salads tend to lean towards the pasta-y side.  After munching my way through a handful of tomatoes waiting for the water to boil, I added some pasta, basil & cheese to my toms & cuke, and made myself a bowl of salad.  What you can't see, despite my best attempts, is that I took my cue from the veggies, and used tricolor pasta, just for the pretty colours.

The tomatoes are fab.  I tend to buy baby plum tomatoes anyway, they've got so much more flavour, but these were beautiful, plump & juicy.  And tomatoes are full of lycopene, which helps protect your skin from the sun.  If we ever get any, that is!  And they're so sweet, even the veg-phobic Squeaky managed to eat a couple! (Too fast for me to record the moment for blogging posterity, I'm afraid)

I'm not quite sure what to say about the cucumber.  It's a cucumber. If it tasted of anything much, it wouldn't be.  It was crisp and chopped up well, and bright green & white like a cucumber should be, but they're sort of hard to get excited about.

I was a bit sad that I didn't get to try out the peppers. I do like a nice pepper in my salad, they add a good bit of flavour & crunch, as well as being chock-ful of vitamins.  I once knew a girl who ate them like apples, but I prefer to leave them in rings, or turn them into pasta sauce.

I'm still a little bit puzzled by the inclusion of aubergines in a salad range.  Can you even eat aubergines raw? They're certainly in a different bit of the supermarket when I look.  I'm not arguing with aubergines, I love them, but they don't scream salad to me.  And I would have liked to see a salad leaf of some sort in the range, I'm a traditional girl at heart and I like a bit of lettuce in my salad.

Good Natured Salads are available in selected Asda stores.  And if you look carefully at the photo above, you'll see that there's a competition on the packs right now to win a holiday with Featherdown Farm!  If that doesn't attract at least a few eyes, I don't know what will!

EDIT: I just finished up the tomatoes today, and took the plastic off to separate for recycling.  Then I noticed on the back that Good Natured have a few farms across the UK, including one in the Rhymney Valley, South Wales.  And that my tomatoes had actually come from that farm.  This is something I've seen on eggs a few times, detailing exactly where the food has come from, but I'd not seen it on veg before.  The Rhymney Valley is the next valley across from me, less than 10 miles away (even less from the Asda I bought them from), so my food miles are looking really healthy, and I feel great that I've supported local farmers.

I was provided with a voucher in order to purchase items from the Good Natured Salads range for the purposes of this review. I was not told what to write and all opinions are my own.  Links are provided for convenience, I am not a member of any affiliate schemes and will not receive any reward for their use.