Caesar Salad

So last night’s meal was a little different.  This weekend I think my husband had a Caesar salad for the first time, and actually liked it quite a bit.  So that is what he requested for dinner, odd I know.  So I made a Caesar salad using some of the roast chicken I had left over from last week and also made a soup from the roast chicken carcass.  I will admit I am not a very good soup maker; they never have as much flavor as I am anticipating.  “It tastes like soup” is what my insightful husband had to say about it.  But since I had the chicken bones, plus extra carrots, celery, and potatoes that I bought last week, soup seemed to make the most sense to go with the salad.

Caesar Salad

2 big handfuls of greens, I used sweet baby spring mix which has romaines, spinach, arugula and some other greens

2 tbs parmesan cheese

1 tbs pumpkin seeds, or sunflower seeds

½ hard-boiled egg

½ cup croutons

¼ cup diced chicken

Dressing

2 tbs Greek yogurt

2 tsp olive oil

½ tsp malt vinegar

1 tsp mustard, something spicy like whole grain or Dijon

Salt and pepper to taste

You can make this a meal on its own or as a side, depending upon how much protein you add to it.  I didn’t want this to be the whole meal so I only used ¼ cup chicken so we could have something to go with it.  

As I prepared the recipe, 124 calories undressed, 200 calories and 11 g fat dressed.  If you use 2 8-oz chicken breasts that would get you up to 600 calories

So I think there are 3 really quick ways to ruin a salad.  1. Dirty greens.  Be sure to wash your greens well, grit isn’t a texture that adds much to a meal.  2.  Wet greens.  Make sure you dry the greens really well before assembling the salad, sogginess also doesn’t add much.  If you don’t have a salad spinner, which I don’t, I usually wash them, dry them and let them set aside well before I actually start cooking.  3. Dressing the salad prematurely.  You don’t want all of your dressing to sink to the bottom.  Especially if you are using an oil/vinegar mix be careful of this because the oil and vinegar will start to separate.

For the dressing I used Oikos Greek yogurt.  I usually use the yogurt of the Gods or whatever that one is called, but I succumbed to advertisements and thought I would try it and let me tell you that John Stamos was right.  This yogurt is really good, my husband didn’t turn into John Stamos, but he’s close enough for me to begin with so that's ok, I will definitely be switching to this yogurt anyway.  I also used this unbelievable mustard that my in-laws brought us back from Germany.  So I apologize you have no chance of making your dressing as good as mine because this is quite possibly the best mustard in the world.  Every time I open the jar I have to refrain from just eating it with a spoon, sounds crazy to do with mustard I know, but it is so good.

So I feel like this is already getting kind of long and I still have the soup to tell you about.  It really wasn’t that good so I will just tell you what I did briefly and you can experiment to improve upon it.

I cut up the chicken carcass, added salt, pepper, thyme, rosemary, bay leaves and simmered for 30 minutes, the timing may have been where I went wrong in the first place but the hubs was “starving”.   Then I removed the bones and added potatoes, carrots, and celery and cooked until tender.  I took off all of the chicken that was still left on the bones and added back to the stock, seasoned again and served.  The more I ate the more used to it I got, but it was a little bland, “just tasted like soup”.