Lesli, I just looked up this recipe to find out what copper penny salad is. If your recipe involves a can of tomato soup concentrate, you can't re-can the salad. Commercial canned soups have weird thickeners and stuff in them that are unsafe in home-canned products. In general it's best to avoid making canning recipes with previously canned products (though it's not always dangerous...I use a can of commercial plain tomato sauce for the sauce called for in Annie's salsa). Also, the oil in the salad would prevent safe canning. I think you would do best canning the carrots either plain (if you have a pressure canner - be sure to use a tested recipe from NCHFP or Ball since low-acid canning is at risk for botulism) or pickled (which would probably make an interesting salad - I love pickled green beans in vinaigrette-style potato salad). Melissa

I have been out of town working all week with no time to respond here. Please understand my sensitivity regarding this matter. I make my living as a creative person, mostly doing visual art but am occasionally called on for my writing skills such as they are. I would be very upset if my efforts - visual or written - were presented as someone else's even if only by omission of attribution. To me it is just wrong. Pleading ignorance doesn't make it okay. Just because it's posted to the internet doesn't make it okay - anymore than taking someone's belongings because they left them unguarded in a car with an open window. Having opportunity does not grant permission. Many years ago I sat in the audience of a local design and advertising awards presentation and watched as my design work - a year's worth of my daily efforts - was presented on screen with no designer/illustrator credits given. I had resigned from my art director position with the design firm a few weeks prior to the show. I left on good terms and had even given a month's notice. I left because I couldn't work a 60 hour week any longer, I was exhausted. My heart broke as I watched my work receive award after award. Even the presenter commented that there were no credits to individuals (like the other entries). My former employer had no idea I was in the audience. She looked rather startled when she ran into me in the lobby after the show. I said nothing. At the same show a photographer had entered one of my pieces (her photo, my design) with no credit to me. Ironic because she had made a big stink about the design firm using her image without credit or royalties. The client had supplied us with a large number of transparencies without informing us that they didn't actually own rights to many of them. Our ignorance didn't make it right. A fee was negotiated and she was given printed credit on the finished piece. Yet she submitted that same printed piece as her own. Go figure. Another time I was asked by a friend and professional colleague to create a poster for an event. It was for the one-time performance of a master's thesis, an interesting adaptation of a Mozart opera. Most of the professional opera singers donated their time, as did the costume designer and others. I created the poster, promotional materials, and tickets. When I opened the program (written by my friend) I read the many credits and my name did not appear! I hadn't given myself a credit on the poster itself, either. I mentioned it to him. He looked horrified, poor fellow. I have a distinctly formed opinion about creative ownership. I can site many examples of my work being imitated, sometimes it's flattering. It feels a lot better to be acknowledged and appreciated. I do gratis work as well for friends, for fund-raisers. It isn't all about monetary gain. Eileen

Although vacuum-sealing the greens in a jar seems like a great idea and is a HOT trend for the salad-in-a jar folks, according to "Eating on the Wild Side" The Missing Link to Optimum Health by Jo Robinson, I've been doing it wrong by vacuum-sealing greens and there is a better method for storage. Put the greens in a resealable plastic bag, squeeze out as much air as possible without crushing the leaves, seal the bag, and then use a needle or pin to prick it with between ten and twenty evenly spaced holes. (Make 10 pinpricks in quart-size bags and twenty in gallon-size bags.) Put the bag in the crisper drawer of your refrigerator, which is the coolest, most humid location. Cut lettuce actually keeps better using this method. Why the holes? The tiny, almost invisible pinpricks provide the ideal level of humidity inside the bag and enable the beneficial exchange of gasses. The plants don't die after being harvested, they continue to consume oxygen and produce carbon dioxide; in other words, they "breathe." If you store greens in a tightly sealed bag without the pinpricks, or a low-oxygen environment like a vacuum-sealed jar, the carbon dioxide levels rise and the oxygen declines. After a few days, the lettuce leaves will begin to die from lack of oxygen. As a result (according to the book's author) their fresh flavor and most of their phytonutrients will disappear. And isn't that why we are eating them? So preserve as many as possible for as long as possible to begin with. This is called "microperforated" bags throughout the book. I have a selection of zip-lock bags I've microperforated that I use and reuse for greens. I have them marked and stored in a container for reuse after I wash, rinse, and thoroughly air-dry the bags. Other ways to add more vegetables to a lunch. How about a pasta salad where there is a token amount of pasta and a LOT of fresh veggies. I also make a salad mixture using shredded cabbage, shredded carrots, shredded broccoli stems, shredded or thinly-sliced radishes, shredded celery (NO lettuce or wet ingredients like chopped tomatoes or cucumbers). This shredded mixture is a favorite served with a sprinkle of shredded cheddar or mozarella cheese or cottage cheese (no dressing needed) and keeps well in the refrigerator in an air-tight container for a week. Do NOT vacuum-seal this salad mixture because of the sulfur-containing vegetables, which should NOT be vacuum-sealed. This mixture also works as a topping on a sandwich or add a quick dressing for coleslaw. Wednesday is "Stir-Fry" night, so leftover stir-fry (loaded with fresh/frozen/freeze-dried vegetables - many of them prepared days before for other meals) is what's for lunch on Thursday. I personally have a 3-day rule for meat in the refrigerator, whether the meat is vacuum-sealed or not, so I would NOT make a week's worth of salads-in-a-jar WITH the protein added. Like sleevendog, I keep portions in the freezer, either in snack-size bags or the 1-cup portion bags (give it a whack while still frozen to break into smaller portions if you only need a portion from the bag), small storage containers. OR, my new "friend", the 4-ounce canning jar as a way to stop using so much plastic. I use a 4-oz. portion of sprouted lentil chili to top a baked (or microwaved) potato, or as a topping for a taco salad (a la Wendy's Style). I freeze leftover meat from meals in the 4-oz. canning jars and when I make a salad-in-a-jar, I pop the frozen jar of meat in the top of the pint jar (they fit inside a wide-mouth jar perfectly). That way hubby has the option to heat the meat, and the frozen meat helps keep the veggies chilled in his thermal lunch bag. I also have frozen cooked grains and beans I can add. Another thing I do is to recycle plastic containers from 4-ounce individual containers of applesauce. They also fit inside the wide-mouth jar and the rim will rest on the jar top -- AND -- you can seal the lid over the recycled plastic applesauce container. Great place to put meat or the dressing, or things that make the salad soggy, or things you want to remain crispy, and add them in just before eating. I would get a tray or basket and locate the prepared salad add-ins all in one place in the refrigerator so I could just pull it out to make preparation simple each day. The contents would change as the produce options and the add-ins changed. You may be surprised how many vegetables increase in nutrients when cooked, so consuming all of them in a fresh green salad means you may be missing a lot of the potential nutrients. Is the fresh green salad a MUST on the diet, or just an option? I make sweet potato chips and purple potato chips in the microwave (NO fat or salt), and dehydrated zucchini chips for our "chip" options. There are any number of salt-free seasonings that you can jazz them up with (see Mrs. Dash salt-free herb mixtures for a large variety of flavors). How about "Meals In A Jar For One" using freeze-dried ingredients, including freeze-dried meats. This goes along with what sleevendog does. This IS a time you can make a number of these ahead and add an oxygen absorber (or vacuum-seal them with a FoodSaver). These are my pantry "convenience" foods. Some of them I prepare in pint jars, instead of quarts, to have smaller portions. Here are some recipes for personal-sized meals-in-a-jar from Stephanie Petersen (aka Chef Tess Bakeress) - http://honeyvillefarms.blogspot.com/2012/09/chef-tess-5-personal-sized-meals-in-jar.html#.VxyMjY-cHL8  You can find a lot of her videos on YouTube showing how to assemble some of her "In-A-Jar" recipes. I'm a huge fan of using freeze-dried vegetables when I don't have fresh from the garden. In the winter our "fresh" vegetables are sprouts of all kinds (my little garden-in-a-jar) - since sprouting increases the nutrients - and the micro-greens I grow. So-called "fresh" vegetables from the store are NOT fresh and the nutrients are completely degraded by the time you get them home. I also grow an assortment of fresh herbs indoors which I add to salads as an excellent nutrient-rich source. -Grainlady

plllog, if you freeze then thaw tofu, it changes the texture to be less pasty, more chewy, more voids, less soft, more meat-like. Grab a block and try, it’s kind of cool. Smoked tofu is another angle, you can buy that in Asian markets. Whether it will sub well for tuna in tuna salad I’m not sure, but I’d cube it then mix with mayo, seasonings, the usual tuna salad stuff, and then take a portion and experiment with the tiniest amount of fish sauce. In fact ,I’m now thinking there must be a better way to get that tuna-y flavor than fish sauce, because canned tuna is not really “fish-y“ which is why kids will eat it, and it’s not really salty either. Maybe forget about “fish”-ish and instead try “umami”-ish things. I’m a fan of nutritional yeast, of dry cheeses like ricotta, of powdered mushroom.