Earlier in the week, a good friend of mine and I went out to dinner. I had a salad and I really enjoyed it and its small portions of random things. This is a great salad if you had some leftovers or if you want to make a lot of the components and pack them for lunches for the week.

Ingredients:

cooked chicken breasts
whole wheat pasta in any shape you have or like
pesto (since this winter has ravaged our basil plants we had to bite the bullet and buy premade pesto)
pine nuts
kalamata olives
cucumbers
tomatoes
any other veggies you would like to add
your favorite salad greens
homemade vinaigrette

I didn’t have any pre-cooked chicken breasts so I made some on the fly. I really like “Stubbs” chicken marinade. The sodium level is at the level I would have if I was making the marinade myself (I went to the store at 5:30 at night and I was not in the mood) and the ingredients simple and tasty. I marinaded the chicken for 45 minutes and then placed the chicken and marinade (1/2 bottle) in a Pyrex dish and baked them for 45 minutes at 375.

Chicken marinading

Once the chicken is done, let them rest and don’t cut into them.

While the chicken is resting, cook the pasta until it is al dente. I used some whole wheat fusili I had lying around so I saved money by not having to buy that. Once the pasta is done, stir in 2 tablespoons of the pesto sauce and the pinenuts. Set that aside or put it in the fridge so that it is cool.

To make the vinaigrette:
1/2 c oil (i used olive oil)
1/2 c vinegar (if you have some raspberry wine vinegar it is great but we had some nice balsamic in our pantry so I used that)
2t dijon mustard
1/4t dried oregano
if the dressing is too “sharp” you can add a spoonful of sugar to sweeten it up some

Put all of these ingredients in a small food processor and blend until it is completely incorporated.

For the salad, add the greens of your choice. We used the field green mix and added some arugula because I love me some arugula. Slice the chicken and add on top along with 6 or so kalamata olives and the veggies you like. Next, add 2 spoonfuls of the pasta mixture. Drizzle on top 2 T of the salad dressing and you are done!

This is a great salad for lunches because everything keeps really well, the chicken is delicious and this salad is filling enough to keep you going all day long.

For the nutritional values, making the dressing yourself will save you in salt, sugar, preservatives and other junk. Using small portions of a lot of components will also save you because you get to taste everything. Some days I just crave a big bowl of pasta but that would be bad for the diet. This salad is great because I get to satisfy that overwhelming craving for pasta but without blowing my whole day.

The whole salad for one person is about 750 calories. This might sound high to you but its because a lot of them are from the chicken. There are 40 g of fat but also 64 g of protein. The total cost of this meal is great because you can use a lot of what you have already in your kitchen. We had the chicken from our big value packs from Sams. All I had to buy was the marinade, pesto, olives, pine nuts and greens which made the total grocery bill $14.29. There were 4 chicken breasts made and we bought the jumbo box of greens so this recipe made 4 large servings which makes each serving $3.57. Not bad for some high protein lunches!