Pantry Collective

Ever on the lookout for dinner-salads my husband will eat, I was inspired by Mexican Style Smart Ground at the grocery store. This salad approximates all the flavors of a typical family restaurant-style taco salad, but is low in fat and calories, vegetarian, and high in protein and fiber. Sorry about the crappy picture. Still working on the camera situation :).

The base salad is green leaf lettuce, green peppers, cucumber, roma tomato. This is tossed with dressing and Smart Grounds and topped with 2oz of crumbled tortillas. Garnish each serving with a dollop of fresh plain yogurt and cilantro.

Dressing: You can use any variety of yogurty, cheesy dressings and just add some chili powder. I went with 5tbs Kraft Light Three Cheese Ranch Reduced Fat Dressing and added 2 1/2tbs of homemade chili powder.

Nutrition Estimate (per dinner-sized serving, with dressing):

575 calories, 10g fat, 13g fiber, 24g protein

First order of business: sorry for the bad photo. It doesn’t look nearly as good as it tastes. I was in a hurry and didn’t let John take a proper photo, plus it’s not really the most beautiful dish in the first place (although I’ll be they could make it lovely on Top Chef or something).

Second order of business: the window of opportunity is kind of over for this sort of thing at this point, since we’re no longer at the height of fresh tomato season (in Chicago, anyway). But maybe you have a secret source of delicious, juicy, non-mealy tomatoes in the winter. If you do, make this. Really. It’s amazingly yummy.

Back when the summer was in high gear, I saw a lot of recipes for panzanella, which is basically a bread salad. I thought, why not combine my love for caprese salads with my love for bread? And thus, caprese panzanella was born. This was made for a picnic and there wasn’t a bite left over if I recall correctly.

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Our CSA share came with a lovely head of Napa Cabbage and some beautiful green onions last week, and I knew I could make a delicious Asian-inspired salad with just a few more ingredients. The salad was delicious - crunchy, sweet and sour, and fresh tasting. It paired beautifully with the sesame tilapia, which is a really simple recipe that cooks up in no time and tastes amazing.

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I’ve been on a balsamic vinegar kick for a while. Somehow, I got the notion that vanilla and balsamic might go together, and google agreed, leading me to a recipe from Cooking Light for Vanilla Balsamic Chicken. I also had a strong desire to use spinach fettuccine and beets, and there you go, dinner. The carrots add a nice pop of color to the plate, don’t you think? Not too shabby for simple boiled carrots.

Anyway, back to the chicken. It was good! I’ll tell you what, though, as yummy as it was for dinner, it was a million times better the next day as chicken salad. I chopped the chicken tossed it with a little red onion, half a diced apple, and a bit of mayo, and seriously, it was amazing. Make sure when you coat the chicken with the sauce that you get all of those delicious minced shallots on there. They are so sweet and rich and delicious - they really make the dish - so don’t ignore them in the bottom of the pan.

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Isn’t this photo pretty? Thanks to my lovely husband for taking all the photos on this blog.

Our friend Gino came over for dinner this past Saturday. He’s cooked for us so many times in recent months that I really wanted to make something delicious to return the favor. I’ve recently rediscovered balsamic vinegar and have been eating it on everything lately, so I used that as a starting point. It’s also starting to feel spring-y here in Chicago, but there’s still a chill in the air, so I wanted something both light and comforting. I eventually decided on a salad of mixed spring greens with orange segments, toasted pecans, red onion, and a citrus balsamic vinaigrette to start, and a balsamic glazed roasted chicken, which I made in my brand new kitchen toy, a 6qt Lodge enameled dutch oven. Shiny!

My favorite produce market had a huge tub of greens for $2, so even after the big bowl of salad I made, I had probably 2/3 of the tub left. Luckily, the salad works really well with some leftover shredded chicken thrown in!

The recipe for the chicken will be up later this week.

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