Ultimate Chicken Finger Salad with Buffalo Ranch Dressing

I grew up in Tennessee.  There was this place in my hometown that had this crispy chicken salad I absolutely loved!  I would get it every time and never tire of it.  I still have a weakness for crispy chicken salads, even though I try not to eat fried chicken so much these days.

When I was working on my meal plan, I stumbled upon a recipe titled “Ultimate Chicken Fingers” that looked promising.  The chicken fingers looked crispy and delicious despite being oven baked.  Hmm…

I added them to the calendar for tonight’s meal and didn’t think much about it after.  Then, as I was trying to plan my side dishes for tonight, I had a thought.  If these chicken fingers were as “ultimate” as they claimed, I bet they’d go great over a salad.  The plan was born.

After I mixed the Bisquick, parm cheese, and other ingredients together, coated the chicken fingers, and placed them in the oven to baked, I got to work on the salad.  I used to be pretty bland with my salad toppings.  Lettuce, a bit of cheese, and maybe some sliced almonds.  Nowadays, I’m all about the toppings.  In fact, I could probably leave out the lettuce and just go for a chopped veg salad.  This salad was so good.  It was spicy and savory, creamy and flavorful.  It was big though.  I didn’t finish it all.  I will be making these chicken fingers again, though!

Ultimate Chicken Finger Salad
(adapted from this recipe)

2/3 cup Bisquick
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp smoked paprika (you can use regular if that’s all you have)
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut in strips
1 egg, slightly beaten
nonstick spray

Preheat oven to 450º.  Spray a cooling rack with nonstick spray and place over a cookie sheet, then set aside.

While your oven is preheating, mix Bisquick, cheese, salt, garlic, and paprika together in a shallow bowl.  I like to use cake pans.  In a separate bowl, beat the egg.  Dip your chicken strips, one at a time, first in the egg, then in the Bisquick mix.    Place your strips on the cooling rack.  Bake at 450º for 12-14 minutes, turning once halfway through.  Cook until chicken is done all the way through and breading is crispy.

I served mine over a big salad that included carrots, red pepper, cheddar cheese, chopped Blue Diamond Honey Dijon almonds, and hamburger bun “garlic toast” all topped with Buffalo Ranch dressing.

You may be wondering what hamburger bun “garlic toast” is.  Well…years ago I was visiting my mom and her boyfriend/manfriend/”husband”.  His title is a little hazy.  Just go with it.  Anyhow, we had a delicious recipe called Slum Gullion (seriously delicious…I’ll post it soon) with toasted buns spread with garlic butter.  I just kind of looked at the buns and then stared quizzically at my mom.  She explained that they never eat all the buns they buy for a particular meal and, instead of seeing them go to waste, they turn them into garlic bread for meals like these.  She just spreads them with butter, tops them with a little garlic powder and toasts them up.  I go a step further.  I melt my butter and mix in a bit of Aimee’s For the Love of Garlic Butter.  Oh my gosh, so good!

Also, you may remember that Jeff and I are huge buffalo wing fans.  Who isn’t though?  Any time we have chicken fingers in the house, he insists I make buffalo ranch dressing.  It’s really very simple.  You take ranch dressing and mix in hot sauce.  My personal favorite is Frank’s Red Hot.  You can mix in just a dash or a whole tablespoon depending on how daring you are.  I made mine a tad too spicy tonight!  Whoops!

As I said, this salad was extremely good.  Even Jeff commented on how good the salad tasted with the added chicken fingers.  This is going onto the MUST MAKE AGAIN board!

And you may be wondering how the pictures are so light and fluffy…light and airy?…no I got it.  How they are lit so well.  I spent 20 minutes today making this:

I got me a fancy, schmancy light box now.  Actually there’s nothing fancy or schmancy about it, but it is effective!

What are your favorite salad toppings?
I’m always looking for more inspiration.

Restaurant Review: BD’s Mongolian Grill

BD’s Mongolian Grill, located across from the Rave Movie Theater at The Greene, is quite unique.  The first time someone mentioned it to me, I had no idea what they were talking about.  “You pile up a bowl with meat and veggies and they grill them all while you wait.”  What?  I didn’t get it.  So I decided to check it out myself.  That was a few years ago.  I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve returned since.

Upon entering and being seated, the waiters bring bowls around to your table.  You are instructed to fill your bowl with meat and veggies, choose a sauce, and wait for the grillers to tell you where to stand.

They have a plethora of food choices.  Tons of meat, seafood, and veggie options are laid out before you.  You can see the full list on their website.  When you get to the sauces, you can be overwhelmed.  My advice is to mix a few.  Today I chose Mongolian Ginger, Pad Thai, Shitake Mushroom, and Chili Garlic.  Sample spoons are provided.

Once you’re finished, they take your bowl of food and throw it on a huge circular grill to start their magic.  While rock music blasts overhead, the grillers sing, dance, and have a party while they make the food.  The meat gets cooks, the veggies chopped, and everything is seasoned with the sauce you’ve chosen.

Your food is returned to you and you are free to enjoy your meal.

The waiters bring around rice and (if desired) tortillas and lettuce for wraps.  I know it sounds strange, but try the tortillas.  They add a soft, slightly sweet flavor to the food that just…works.

Also available are the soup and salad bar, appetizers, and desserts.  Normally I stick to the entree only, but my mom and I splurged on the crab rangoon.  Delish!

One thing I love about BD’s is that you can easily eat healthy here.  Go light on the meat, heavy on the veggies, and choose your sauce wisely.  Then opt for the lettuce wraps.

BD’s is a great place for families as well as a date night, especially followed up by a movie.  If you’re in the area, I highly recommend it!

 

My Story

For as long as I can remember, I have had a misconception about my figure.  Growing up, I felt I stood out as the biggest of all my friends, even though I was the shortest at 5’2”.  I wanted to be strong and lean, with small hips.  Instead I was weak.  Or that’s how I saw myself.  In reality, I was only about 125.

Most of my friends had tiny, little bodies and could wear and eat whatever they wanted.  I always covered up in jeans and baggy t-shirts.  They would take pictures of themselves at the lake in their bikinis.  I would make up excuses as to why I couldn’t join them.  I felt like everyone would judge me and I would be the “fat one”.  Looking back, I want to shake that girl and tell her to wake up!

I remember being at a festival with my boyfriend and his best friend.  I overheard my high school boyfriend tell his friend I had a big butt and from then on I was ashamed of it.  The word “big” to a girl more often than not sounds like “ugly”, “disgusting”, or “unwanted”.

Being from the South, I did not have great food education.  I thought fried chicken, buttered corn, rolls, and pie was a well-balanced meal.  I ate pretty much whatever I wanted.  I was not on any sports teams.  I worked after school, so I didn’t factor in exercise at all.  Basically, I was cheating myself.

When I went away to the University of Kentucky, I learned more and more about fitness and nutrition by talking with some of the girls in my dorm.  I was scared of gaining the dreaded Freshman Fifteen, so I tried to pay more attention to what I ate and, with walking all over campus, I was able to actually lose some weight!

Then, sophomore year, I got a job at K-lair Grill.  Let’s just say nutrition went out the window for a while.  K-lair specialized in greasy cheeseburgers, spicy fries, and their crowning joy:  biweekly Fried Chicken Strips.  People would line up around the building on chicken strip night.  They were delicious.

I got to eat free when I was at work and, since their healthy options were lacking (as were my finances), I started packing on the pounds.  I reached my then highest weight:  145 pounds.  I thought that was horrible.  I felt so fat, but I couldn’t seem to muster the desire to do anything about it.  I mean, I was working 25 hours a week, going to school full time, and had a boyfriend who loved to go out to eat.  Who had time to worry about calorie intake and exercising?

My junior year of college, I moved into an apartment with three other girls.  I never knew it would change my life forever.  My roommates were Jenny, Jennifer, and Carolyn, a fellow food lover.  Over time, my relationship with Carolyn grew.  We bonded over the love of cooking and the Food Network.  She was going to school to be an RD and helped me realize my food choices weren’t exactly the healthiest ones.  I was one to grab frozen pizzas, bags of barbeque potato chips, and regular Coke.  When I went out to eat, I almost always ordered a cheeseburger or chicken strips.  I liked to think I was a foodie, but I really just liked watching people make stuff on TV.

After a while, and much education from Carolyn, my food intake began to change.  It was gradual…choosing sweet potatoes over white potatoes, opting for grilled chicken instead of fried, and the mother of all changes:  switching to DIET soda.  This, my friends, took some perseverance.  After all those changes, I still didn’t really lose any weight though.  After all, I was still eating crap at work and not exercising, but I told myself I was being healthy and didn’t really think much of it.

After we graduated, Carolyn moved to Nashville and I moved to Dayton.  My husband and I got engaged in July of 2006 and, instead of losing weight and becoming fit as most brides did, I put more weight on.  I’m not sure if it was the stress of planning a wedding, the unhealthy eating habits I had due to my retail job, or something else altogether, but I ended up adding 20 pounds to my frame.  When I got married, I weighed 165 pounds.  It was the most I had ever weighed in my life.

A couple things happened then.  First, the husband decided he had put on some weight and wanted to lose it.  Being a typical guy, he lost 20 pounds in a matter of months.  With him being so much thinner, it made me want to try to lose some weight too.

Second, I finally woke up after 28 long years and saw “the light”.  I had a conversation with myself one day that went something like this:

“You are 28.  You are overweight.  I know you want to have kids at some point in the near future.  Don’t you want to be at a healthier weight before you even begin to go through pregnancy?  You want the best for your baby, so why not give yourself the best now?  When you eat crap from McDonalds, you get hungry an hour later, so wouldn’t it make more sense to eat healthy food and then, if you get hungry an hour later, eat a small snack?  You won’t feel as guilty about that scenario.  Why not just try it for a few months without giving up?  If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.  But if it does work, imagine the difference you’ll feel about yourself!”

So I tried it.  Something you should know about me is, in the past when I have tried to “get healthy”, I have done well for about three weeks and then given up.  If I didn’t see results after three weeks, I just assumed I would never see them.  Why torture myself with diet and exercise if nothing was going to change.

This time, I was diligent.  I counted calories, logged everything in Calorie King, and tried to get as much walking in as I could.  You know what?  It worked.  I started my journey around this time last year and, after about five months, I had lost 20 pounds.  I still am not quite where I would like to be, but I feel healthier now.  I can run, I eat so much better, and I just feel good.  I treat myself the way I deserve to be treated and I don’t feel like punishing myself every day.  And you know what else?  I am happy.