Oriental Chicken Salad

Geri brought this salad to a church activity 6 years ago when I first moved to Minneapolis. It was tasty, so I asked for the recipe. She gave it to me and I stared in amazement. Raw red peppers?? Raw cabbage? Did she give me the WRONG recipe? The salad I remembered was tasty - and it certainly couldn't have contained those retched ingredients. This was back before I went wild and started eating vegetables.

But, alas, this time I ate my words - and a hearty portion of the cabbage salad. It contains all the 'bad' healthy ingredients and it is still good enough to chomp as a snack.

If you slice the peppers very thinly they will be less of a shock to picky taste buds. The soy sauce dressing really helps make it savory, and let's be honest: the Ramen seasoning makes it much, much tastier.

On a final note of caution, be careful when eating this in crowds. I brought a container of this to work for lunch about 3 years ago. I had made a bunch of it, so I ate it two days in a row. On the second day, I was halfway through the container when Dan walked in, sniffed the air, and loudly exclaimed, "WHAT IS THAT SMELL!??!" Nobody moved and there was absolutely no eye contact. As the silence stretched on and on, somebody finally pointed to my cube.

Surprised at this turn of events, I looked around the room at every one of my coworkers. Uh.....can the smell of cabbage be offensive? I wanted to crawl under my desk and hide. This is the first time I have made the recipe since that fateful day, and I just took a big whiff and positively think Dan must have been exaggerating.

Cabbage smells yummy to a room full of people who spend the day together but wish they didn't have to.

This is very adaptable. I didn't have green onions or bean sprouts, so I used chopped celery and put a few chopped onions in the dressing. Also, I left out the chicken to make it a side dish instead of a main dish.

Oriental Chicken Salad

1 small head cabbage, chopped

8 ounces bean sprouts

1 red pepper, thinly sliced

6 green onions, chopped

1 small package slivered almonds

4 chicken breasts, cooked and chopped

1 package Ramen noodles, crumbled (chicken or oriental flavored)

Dressing

6 T oil

2 T vinegar

2 T soy sauce

1 t sugar

1 Ramen seasoning pack

Mix the dressing and toss it with the cabbage just before serving. Relish this at home - some people are so picky about smells. Smell this and then tell me that you would rather smell a batch of chocolate chip cookies.