Blackened Chicken and Avocado Salad

I don't really like salads as a meal except for this one. I used to get something similar from the Guards for lunch when I worked in Georgetown, and I started making it at home. It's really easy and tasty. I get chicken breasts or cutlets and pound them till they're pretty thin, then coat them with olive oil, salt, pepper, old bay, paprika, and cayenne pepper. I have no idea what is included in a real blackening seasoning mix, but I think this tastes good. Then I cook the chicken in a skillet. Meanwhile, I cut up some cucumbers and tomatoes and dress them with lettuce in balsamic vinegar. Then when the chicken is done, I slice it and put it on the salad, along with slices of avocado. I've been getting some prepared corn and bean salad from whole foods and adding that as well. We usually eat it with a french baguette. Mmm.

leftover mania

So I made this mushroom ravioli and salad the night after the salmon and green beans, and I wanted to use up some random stuff we had hanging around. The sauce was really easy, just the leftover canned chopped tomatoes, half an onion, a few cloves of chopped garlic, parsley, and oregano. We had an extra random chicken breast in the freezer, so I chopped that up into bite size pieces and (over) cooked it in the sauce. I realized we wouldn't be able to eat the whole bag of spinach as a salad, so I put some of it into the sauce as well. The pasta component of this meal was trader joes mushroom ravioli, which were really tasty, but we both agreed would have been better in a creamy sauce. Pasta in our world is not complete without garlic bread, so I used a french baguette, covered with a couple table spoons of the mix of melted butter, olive oil, fresh garlic, and garlic powder. And parmesan cheese and parsley, of course. I burned the first batch (oops) so this garlic bread was try number 2.




Next up was the salad, which was also really easy. Bagged spinach plus the strawberries I had for snacking plus pistachios I bought to attempt to make pistachio cupcakes for NP's birthday plus goat cheese which we use in a lot of salads. I liked the balsamic/dijon vinaigrette I made to go along with it, but NP thinks champagne vinaigrette would have been better. Next time I'll use Gorgonzola cheese instead of goat cheese though. Or maybe next time NP can do the cooking...