The latest healthy meal in my recent kick was inspired by, well, the ingredients in the fridge that needed to be used up. When you stock your fridge with fruits and veggies, you get salads packed with anti-oxidants, protein and – most importantly – variety from boring ol’ greens.
You get something like:
Chicken Pear Protein Salad
- We start with the leftover Mango Salsa from the Meal of Mangoes, and add a heavy sprinkle of sunflower seeds, chia seeds and hemp seeds. This goes into half of a red, round bowl.
- Into the other half of the bowl goes a leafy mix of spinach and kale, both organic, of course.
- Meanwhile, the chicken breast left over from Enchilada Night grills on the Foreman. Then, sliced, it tops the salad.
- Meanwhile, one sliced pear with a handful of dried cranberries saute in the skillet with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and wasabi powder. The fruit, along with any remaining ‘warm dressing,’ then top the chicken atop the salad.
- For a final touch, some sliced scallions top the pears atop the chicken atop the salad. Ta-da.
Of course, variety is the key to any tolerable salad IMHO: fruits and veggies, nuts and berries, greens and reds and yellows. And here, even the cold crunch of chilled veggies contrasts with the warm tenderness of the pears and chicken for a variety of textures and temperatures that almost makes me forget I’m eating a salad at all – and, to me, that’s a good salad.
