Tonight's Salad Wars won me my first victory - for my first Salad Wars submission! Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. Even David liked this one the best, and he's not usually a fan of sweet salads. Here's what I used:
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| Glorious strawberries!! |
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| Almost done... |
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| ...et voila! |
I used mixed greens, mandarin orange sections, sliced strawberries (used an egg slicer to do those - turned out quite well in the end!), candied pecans, goat cheese, raspberry vinaigrette dressing and some chicken sauted in bouquet garni and minced garlic.
It was pretty glorious, but I have a few notes. Number one, you could also substitute apples in place of the mandarin oranges for less calories, but the oranges are pretty glorious. Number two, you could probably also substitute plain pecans for candied ones to cut the calories as well - the candied ones I found were a huge calorie bomb, and still not as tasty as the ones they use in restaurants, so I can only imagine what the nutrition information on those looks like. You could also substitute another mildly sweet (or slightly salty) crunchy things - you just need to keep something crunchy. Number three, the chicken could definitely have been better - I should have grilled it or done it with salt and/or salted butter - it just wasn't fabulous, probably because we realized at zero hour that it was past dinner time, I hadn't started dinner yet, and the chicken was still in the freezer. We had to microwave-thaw it, which works in a pinch but which I do not generally recommend. Number four, I kind of wished I'd used a sweeter dressing - this raspberry vinaigrette was not at all sweet, and we have a raspberry walnut dressing that I'd have much preferred with this salad.
However, all that said, I am currently winning Salad Wars, and I definitely think it's justified! It was absolutely delicious, and the perfect antidote to my extremely stressful day of volunteering today!
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