Salad Challenge

We have been in a bit of a rut lately with what we are eating.  Sometimes, we will get to the point where we are eating out waaay too much because it seems easier.  Recently, we have been trying to be better about eating quick, healthier meals in, but this led to a dinner of Chocolate Cheerios and Goldfish one night recently.  Seriously though, when your meal could be consumed independently by a baby, it probably isn't that well balanced.  Last week, we decided to try a salad challenge.  On Monday, we stocked up on enough stuff to make 4+ dinner salads that were all very different.  This will probably work better once it's summer and we have a greater amount of produce to choose from, but we still got creative and made it work.  Here's a look at how it went...

Monday: Asian Salad

Devin used his firebox as a mini grill to make us some sweet ginger glazed shrimp.  This was put over a bed of a spinach mix with pineapple, mandarin oranges, chow mien noodles, bell pepper, onion, tomatoes, and carrots.  It was topped off with a sesame ginger dressing.

Tuesday: Green Salad with Chicken

Due to the rainy day, we were unable to use the grill for our salad.  So, we simply baked a chicken breast in our toaster oven to slice up.  With assorted vegetables, a little cheese, and roasted red pepper vinaigrette, this salad was delicious!

Wednesday: Mexican Salad

The reason we called this Mexican salad and not Taco salad is that there are no chips.  And, you don't need them!  This salad was made with grilled steak, black beans, corn, peppers, onions, cheese, and pico de gallo instead of dressing.

Thursday was supposed to be a chicken parmesan salad.  I was really excited about this one.  However, it was a beautiful afternoon, so we went to the dog park and stayed until they closed.  By that time, we decided that we were hungry and just wanted to go out to eat.  The rest of our salad stuff was used for a lunch salad on Sunday (not chicken parmesan!), and I did not take a picture.  This was a fun experiment, though, and we plan to do it again!