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.

Meal Plan: February 2013

Everyone has a hard time figuring out what to cook.  I was talking to a co-worker this weekend and she told me that, while she was going back to school, she asked her husband to cook dinner on Thursday nights as it was her busy day.  He replied that he would cook, but she needed to tell him what to make.  She exclaimed that that was the hardest part!

I completely agree.  I love to cook, but sometimes I just really don’t know what to make.  My husband is no help because he never has any ideas for me.  I asked him the same question each week.

What do you want for dinners this week?

He responds one of two ways:

Meatloaf. 

Or

I don’t care.  Whatever you make.

Ugh!  Finally, I got smart.  A few years ago I started meal planning.  I must say…when I do it and stick to the plan, it really makes a difference in my day!  I don’t have that dreaded feeling hanging over my head of what to make.  I typically am more prepared and have the ingredients on hand.  I don’t have to try to figure out how to pick up the ingredients I’m missing and still make it home in time to have dinner on the table by 6p (Jake’s dinner time).

I realize many of you feel the same way, which is why I’m hopefully starting a new series on this blog.  I’ve tried in the past to post menus and failed miserably, so take that as your warning.

Jake eats most anything we eat aside from fish, shellfish, and nuts of any kind (though I did slip and give him some peanuts with my Thai food the other day.  Whoops!).  Some of the dishes are spicy (like the Cajun Chicken Alfredo and the Spicy Chicken Tortilla Rollups).  I figure I’ll just make a couple without the spice or he will have leftovers that day.  In any case, this may help lots of you moms out there!

I also plan to lighten up some of the more calorie dense meals to make them more Weight Loss Goal friendly.  Stay tuned for more on that later.

Here’s the key to reading the calendar.  The light green recipes are from my Pinterest account.  The light blue ones are either from my blog or from my personal collection of recipes.  Here are the links to the recipes you can find online:

Burgers
Cajun Chicken Alfredo
Chicken Bacon Ranch Mac & Cheese
Chicken Cassoulet
Chicken Cordon Bleu
Chicken Taco Chili
Cilantro Lime Chicken
Cream Cheese Chicken
Crispy Southwest Chicken Wraps
Forgotten Chicken
General Tso’s Chicken
Honey Garlic Pork Chops
Meatloaf
Mexican Lasagna
Mini Corn Dog Muffins
Mushrooms Pizza Bites
Pad Thai
Pizza Casserole
Pork Chops au Poivre
Proscuitto Panini
Quick Coq au Vin
Spaghetti with Chicken and Thai Peanut Sauce
Spicy Chicken Tortilla Rollups
TJ (Trader Joe)’s Chicken Satay with Coconut Rice
Ultimate Chicken Fingers

You probably notice there isn’t any room for leftovers.  Most of the time, we either eat the leftovers for lunches, or I try to make a single night’s portion instead of a whole family’s worth.  The food gets eaten, don’t you worry.

I hope you guys enjoy this post!  If this is something you enjoy seeing, please let me know by leaving me a comment on my blog.  You can also show your support by liking my Facebook page!  I’d love to hear from you!

Pin-spiration

I heart Pinterest.  There are so many recipes, crafts, and ideas on that website that you could probably spend several hours looking through things.

Oh wait.  I have.

So, one day, during a massive Pinterest surfing session, I came across this post.  I loved it.  Steph of Modern Parents, Messy Kids has a goal to organize her entire life.  Part of this goal is to create a meal plan that is easy to plan and easy to follow.  Her friend Mel came up with just the type of thing she was looking for.

Basically, Mel breaks down the days of the week into categories (i.e. Meatless Monday, Pasta Tuesday, etc) and then fills in each category with meals.  What a great idea, I thought!  During one of the many midnight feeding sessions with Jake, I started to plan out what my calendar would look like.

Finally, last Thursday, I put my plan in motion.  After a little thinking, I came up with my categories.  They are a little more generic than Mel’s, but that’s OK with me.  It’s what will work for my family.  My categories are:

Sunday-Cookbook Recipe
Monday-Chicken
Tuesday-Pasta/Vegetarian
Wednesday-Beef/Pork
Thursday-Pinterest Recipe
Friday-Fish/Seafood
Saturday-Grill

I (of course) created an Excel spreadsheet, which made it super easy to fill various recipes in.  I knew I wanted to make our favorites once a month, so I immediately plugged in meatloaf, Dad’s spaghetti, Pantry pasta, grilled chicken, Sloppy Joes, and Beef Stroganoff in the spreadsheet.  Then it was simply a matter of filling in the rest of it.

I wanted to include two columns for new recipes (I am a food blogger after all), so I chose a column for cookbooks and one for Pinterest. Here’s what the final spreadsheet ended up looking like:

(click on spreadsheet to see it bigger)

You may notice there are no spots for leftovers, which means I will most likely be cooking every day.  I would love to cook every day, but with my work schedule, it’s just not always feasible.  This is just a work in progress, so I’m using the month of July as a trial.

I am also implementing a planning tool that Kath talks about in this video:

She uses Google Calendars to help her plan her meals and, more importantly, helps remind her of things she needs to do ahead of time.  I’ve started this with my own calendar and hopefully it will work out!

The last and final tool I started using was a board on Pinterest I labeled “Top 10″.

I wanted a place I could quickly refer back to the recipes I chose to try from my Pinterest boards.  This will also make it easier to mark as “Completed” once I have made them.  I’m such a dork, but I love things organized!  That’s probably why I have 33 Pinterest boards…

Only time will tell if my new system will work out.  I am hoping to do a follow up post in August with very positive news!  Stay tuned!

Whole Foods

Diet.  Low fat.  Light.  Fat free.

When you’re trying to lose weight, the no-brainer move is to switch from full fat to fat free right?  Well…not quite.  When you switch to lower calorie options, more often than not, you’re replacing those calories with lots of chemicals and additives.  It might work to help you drop the pounds, but in the long run you’re filling your body with crap you could do without.

So where does this leave me?  Turning to whole foods.  I have decided to try to eat as much minimally processed foods as I can.  I am going to shop from the perimeter of the grocery store as much as possible and really focus on reading food labels.  Have you looked at some of those food labels lately?  They are a mile long and contain so many words I don’t even know how to pronounce.

It’s going to be a work in progress though because I use Sweet-n-low in my coffee and enjoy the occasional Coke Zero.  Baby steps, people.

To get things started, I went to the grocery store and think I did pretty good!

I ended up coming home with just a few things that weren’t considered “whole” foods.  But to be fair, they are for Jeff. 

It’s berry season, so I stocked up!  I’m planning on freezing some of these berries for future use.

Look at all that produce!  Some of those items will be turned in to yummy baby food for the little guy!

Have you tried roasted cauliflower?  I’m not a big fan of cauliflower, but I’ve heard roasting it makes it really delicious.  I think I’ll try it!

Carolyn told me she loved the gyoza potstickers with the gyoza sauce from Trader Joe’s.  I’m a huge fan of potstickers, so this purchase was a must!

I only have a small weakness for Chobani.  And wine.

With all the produce I purchased, I wanted to try something I’d seen on Pinterest a while back.  Have you seen the Salad in a Jar?  I thought it was quite a concept.  I love salads but am always running late for work, so I never have time to put them together.  This way, I can just grab a jar out of the fridge and throw it in my lunch bag.  We’ll see if this works…

I made three kinds:
Harvest Salad with Homemade Raspberry Vinaigrette,

Mixed Veggies with Asian Sesame dressing (store bought…boo!),

and Mixed Veggies with Ranch dressing (again, store bought.  I forgot I had the stuff to make homemade until after I put the jar together…fail!).

I bought the pint sized Ball jars, but realized afterwards I should have grabbed the quart sized ones.  Oh well.  If you’re looking for another blog post in addition to this one, check out Lauren’s guest post on Lindsay’s blog:

Salads in a Jar

After making my salads, I went to pick Jake up.  I discovered it was time for him to eat, so I strapped him to the high chair and had him try peaches.  The verdict?  You be the judge.

OMG he loved them!  He was actually asking for them by opening his sweet little mouth.  (Watch the whole video for a really sweet interaction between the two of us.  He’s so sweet!)  Towards the end, he was starting to lose interest, but perked up again when I tried BLW (baby led weaning) with a banana.

I can’t decide which way Jake prefers his food, but we are going to keep trying both ways.  No matter which way he chooses, it’s going to be as many whole foods as possible for this family for the foreseeable future!

Question:  What’s your best tip for losing the pounds and getting healthy?

Blog Love: Warm Potato Salad

Pinterest is evil.  I can’t even tell you the number of recipes, craft projects, and gift ideas I have pinned in the last few months.  The bad part is, for ever one pin I complete, I pin 10 more!  At this rate, I will never work my way through all those pins!

Carolyn and I did come up with the idea of making a “Ten Pins to Try First” type of board, so I could always have an idea of what I was really looking forward to trying.  I haven’t done it yet, but if I had, I would have had this recipe on there for sure.

I love potatoes and I love salad.  What I don’t love is potato salad, mostly because of the mayo involved.  When I saw this warm potato salad recipe floating around on Pinterest, I knew it was a must try.  I mean bacon, caramelized onions, and potatoes.  What’s not to like??

The recipe comes from Ingrid at The Cozy Apron.  It’s such a delicious recipe and really not too hard to make.  I started with my caramelized onions and while that was simmering, I baked my potatoes and fried my bacon.  The rest was simple!

After your bacon is cooked, you make the warm bacon vinaigrette and then it’s as easy as tossing everything together.  I served our potatoes with some burgers from Dorothy Lane and, I must say, they made a perfect pair!

Jake kept me company while I cooked dinner.  He’s my little sous chef!

Jeff offered to grill the burgers.  What a great guy!  I could get used to this!

So, head on over to The Cozy Apron and show Ingrid a little blog love.  Try her Warm Potato Salad with Warm Bacon Vinaigrette.  I promise you won’t regret it!

What pins on your pin boards are you most looking forward to trying?

Pinterest Recipe Challenge, Volume 2

Since the last time I posted a Pinterest Recipe Challenge was so successful (with myself at least) I thought I would do another challenge.  Honestly, this is more to remind me which recipes I chose to make when I get to the grocery store!  Ha!  More often than not, I’ll pick a few recipes to make, shop for the ingredients, and by the time I go to make the recipe I forgot which one I picked out!

Here’s the next batch of recipes on deck:

For those of you wondering how my last batch of recipes turned out, please see below!

Chicken Adobo:  This was really good!  I added a little extra brown sugar  in at the end because I thought it needed to be a tad sweeter.

Parmesan Chicken Bake:  I wanted this to be really good, but it was just OK.  The croutons on top worked to make the crust somewhat crispy, but if I had to choose, I would make the real dish instead of this one.

Frito Pie:  This was really good too!  My only problem?  I made it waaaayyyy to spicy because I added canned chipotles in adobo and added too many.  Oops!

Balsamic Parmesan Roasted Green Beans with Mushrooms:  Confession…I haven’t quite made this yet.  I do have green beans in my fridge so that I can hopefully make them in the next couple days.

Slow Cooker Chicken and Dumplings:  OK, so here’s the deal.  I made this dish…and then got the stomach flu.  The thought of this dish kinda makes me queasy…  It’s too bad too because from what I remember it was pretty tasty!

Nutter Butter Bars:  I haven’t made this one either because I keep forgetting to pick up Nutter Butters!  I may have to get some of those from work tomorrow…

Have you made anything recently (from pinterest or not) that you have loved?

Pinterest Challenge for March

Do you ever log in to Pinterest and feel overwhelmed by the amount of recipes, crafts, or outfits you’ve pinned?  I know I do.  In fact, for a while I was avoiding Pinterest partly because it was too much, too fast!  Well, that and because I had a baby that was taking up 99.9% of my time.

I use Pinterest predominately for finding awesome recipes.  There are so many people out there that blog about food, not to mention all the professional recipe websites, that I can easily find handfuls of recipes to pin each day.  The problem with that is I pin way more than I can make in a given week, month, or even year!  In fact, when I do my menu planning, my Pinterest has so many recipes on it, I more often than not find myself bypassing Pinterest and looking at Allrecipes instead.  My cookbooks are angry at me for this reason as well.

I made a resolution with myself to cook at least one new recipe a week for the month of February.  I failed miserably. It’s time to try again.  I am going to try to cook one new thing each week from now on instead of limiting myself.  My mom did it when I was growing up and I believe it is a good practice to get into.  This way, I may find a go to recipe like my Brown Sugar Meatloaf (which came around the last time I resolved to add new recipes into my repertoire).

I spent a good amount of time on Pinterest this morning and have found the following five recipes I am going to try to work into my cooking between now and March 31.

In the spirit of sharing, I challenge all of you to make the same recipes so we can compare at the end of March.  I’m always interested in how people changed the recipe and what side dishes they chose to serve alongside.  If you would like to take pictures of your dishes and email them to me, I will feature you in my conclusions post.

1.  Chicken Adobo by Crepes of Wrath

2.  Parmesan Chicken Bake by Food Wishes

3.  Frito Pie by Steamy Kitchen  *I will probably make this with ground turkey*

4.  Balsamic & Parmesan Roasted Green Beans with Mushrooms by Kalyn’s Kitchen

5.  Slow Cooker Chicken & Dumplings by Polish the Stars

BONUS RECIPE CHALLENGE:  Nutter Butter Bars by Keep It Sweet

For those of you who don’t share my same recipe tastes, I would be interested in hearing which dishes you’ve tried in the last month or so that you just loved!  I’m always looking for those recipes that will stick with me for years to come and I find suggestions from others are a great place to start.

My Interest in Pinterest

If you are online even a little bit, chances are you’ve heard of this little website called “Pinterest“.  It’s a virtual pinboard for all the things you come across online that you like, are interested in, or want to remember.  For me, it’s a great place to store all the neat ideas I read about from my bloggers I follow.

I typically read my blogs through Google Reader and when I come across something I want to try, I star the blog post.  It then moves into a folder called “Starred Items”.  Once every few months or so, I’ll go through the folder and look at the starred items.  More often than not, I can’t remember why I starred the post in the first place!  Pinterest takes the guesswork out of this method.  Instead of starring the post, I can “pin” the picture I want to remember to one of my virtual pinboards.  Then when I’m on the website I have snapshots of things I have found interesting in the past.

For example, if I’m looking for a yummy treat to make, I would navigate to my “Sweetness” board and see this:

When you click on one of the pictures, it takes you to the page on pinterest.  One additional click will take you to the webpage you can find the item in question.  Genius!  You can also keep track of items you see while online shopping that you are interested in buying!  So many options at your fingertips!

Here are some of my favorite pins since joining Pinterest:

Obviously, seeing as I follow primarily food blogs, most of my boards will be full of food images, but as you can see there are no limits to the kinds of things you can pin!  One of my friends has kids and is constantly pinning things to do with her children.  My sister has very eclectic tastes and has boards covering everything from inspiration to travel to stylish things.   Carolyn and I have very similar tastes so I feel like I copy her quite often by repinning things she has found an interest in.

That’s the other great thing about Pinterest…you can share your interests with friends and family!  They can follow you and see what you like.  In my opinion, this tells you a lot about a person.  Plus it may just make buying that one of a kind Christmas present that much easier!

The one downside?  You have to be invited to use it.  Luckily, I’m here to help!  If you’re wanting to join, let me know!  I’ll gladly send you an invite.  If you’re already a member and would like to follow my boards, click on the red “Follow Me on Pinterest” button on the left side of my blog.  I love sharing and would love to see what you’re “Pinterested” in too!