Cajun Chicken Salad

This salad is absolutely the best chicken salad ever to cross my lips. It started with our monthly Penzeys ad arriving in the mail. Kevin snatched it and hovered over every page. Then he announced that we simply had to go to Penzeys to buy some Cajun seasoning. Without checking the store hours, we arrived half an hour before they opened, and fiddled around in Uptown for a bit.

When we got home we started cooking. And cooking. And cooking. In all, we had three different Cajun spiced meals in three days. Was it extreme? Just really, really tasty.

Something about the chicken being coated with seasoning and pan-fried makes them incredibly tender and juicy. There is just enough of a kick of flavor to keep it interesting and make you want to dig in for another bite. And then another one.

Cajun Chicken Breasts with Salad

3 4-6 oz chicken breasts (or whatever)

2 T Cajun seasoning

2 T oil

Wash chicken and pat dry. Sprinkle with a thick layer of Cajun seasoning. Heat the oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add the chicken and cook for 4-6 minutes per side depending on thickness. Adjust the heat down a bit if the chicken is browning too quickly or up if it isn't sizzling. Remove from pan and let rest for 5 minutes before slicing into bite-sized pieces.

Salad:

1 head romaine lettuce

1 head leaf lettuce

1/2 tomato, diced

1 small onion, thinly sliced

1 avocado, thinly sliced

Dressing:

1 T Italian seasoning or salad dressing base

1 T water

1/4 C red wine vinegar or regular white vinegar

1/3 - 1/2 C olive oil.

Whisk everything together

Black Bean Nachos (or Salad)

With a bowl of this in my lap I am instantly taken back to childhood where I am sitting on the blue chair with a cup full of hot salsa, melted cheese swirled throughout. One delicious chip after another pass my lips as I ponder all the blessings in my life.

I am older, sadly, my food has gotten healthier, and the blessings seem to be multiplying every day. I am such a lucky girl.

Black beans are by far my favorite bean. oh, sure....all beans taste pretty much the same. Why are black beans the best? They just are. The hint of lime juice in this recipe makes all the difference in the world. For a brief time I thought I lost the recipe, but after months of searching through library books I found it and now I still have no clue where it came from. I will say it is manna from heaven.

This nacho recipe originally calls for a layer of chips, then beans/corn/salsa, then spinach, then cheese, and all of it is baked together. But I don't like the chips baked with topping because they get soggy. Life is just too dang short to eat soggy chips. So I heat the topping mixture together and dip the chips into the hot bean dip. And leave out the spinach. Nobody wants a bite of hay when they are expecting something yummy. Sometimes I leave out the cheese, too. It is good either way, but it may not classify as nachos if there is no cheese. Does anybody have a good recipe title for the cheese free version??

Black Bean Salsa

1/2 onion, chopped and sauteed until soft

1 T oil

1 C canned crushed tomatoes

1 1/2 C frozen corn

1 can black beans (or 1 1/2 C cooked black beans)

2 T lime juice

1 T chili powder

1 t oregano

8 oz. shredded cheese

1 box (10 oz) spinach, thawed and patted dry (optional)

2 C salsa

Saute the onion in the oil for around 8 minutes until soft. Add the tomatoes, salsa, corn, beans lime juice, chili powder, and oregano. Cook for 5 minutes until heated. Put black beans on bottom of a casserole dish, then the spinach, then the cheese. Back at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes until the cheese is melted. Serve with chips, or as the dressing for a salad.

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.

Pomegranate, Grapefruit, and Avocado Salad

Mom makes a great fruit salad. She wouldn't let me take a picture of HER with her salad, but she did let me take a picture of the salad in her gorgeous bowl. It doesn't sound like it would taste very good, but the flavors play together and it is surprisingly yummy. It is a bit of work because getting the seeds out of pomegranates and cutting the grapefruit sections is a time consuming task. If everyone pitches in and helps it goes a lot quicker, but it isn't something I would personally conquer on my own.

Pomegranate, Grapefruit, and Avocado Salad
3 grapefruit
2 small avocados
1 pomegranate
Cut the skin off the grapefruit and then cut out the sections. All the tartness is in the skin, so be sure to get all the skin off. Cube up the avocado, trying not to mash it too much. Bribe someone else into peeling the pomegranate. It seems to take forever and Dad is way faster than I thought humanly possible at peeling pomegranates.

The Salad that Pleased an Engineer

Engineers hate salad. About once a month the company will have a lunch meeting and order 35 pizzas and a single tray of salad. The pizza is wolfed down in a matter of minutes but the salad lingers all afternoon until someone grabs the tray and throws it into the trash. It may begin to explain why "engineer" and "sexy" aren't generally used in the same sentence.

Today we threw ourselves a party to celebrate delivering our product on schedule. I signed up to bring the salad, Susie conquered the dessert and everyone else chipped in for pizza and soda. Did I mention that this isn't a good place to work if you are trying to eat healthy food?

Everyone eyed the salad suspiciously, but to my astonished amazement, everyone also went back for a second helping. Huh? Yep, you heard that right. Of course, everyone had taken only their obligatory 3 lettuce leaves the first time through the line, but then they thought it was so good that they got up specifically to get more. Not every salad has those kinds of bragging rights.

The dressing recipe makes a LOT. I used a 18 ounce bag of lettuce and about 3/4 of the dressing is still left. Hopefully someone will hear that I have a bunch to spare and show up on my doorstep, offering to take it off my hands before it goes bad. 1/3 - 1/2 of the dressing recipe would have been plenty. It is straight from the latest church cookbook.

On a final note, I don't really like mandarin oranges, onions, mustard, or vinegar. But when they all come together they balance out nicely and turn into something yummy.

Orange, Cranberry and Poppy seed Salad

Salad:

Lettuce

Grated Cheese

Mandarin Oranges, drained

Dried Cranberries

Slivered Almonds

Dressing:

2 T poppy seeds

3/4 C apple cider vinegar

2 C oil

1 small onion (or a small handful of food storage onions - they are milder)

2 T mustard

2 t salt

1 C sugar

Combine all dressing ingredients in a blender until smooth. Drizzle over the combined salad ingredients.