What's For Dinner? Asian Dinner Salad

I'm always skeptical of salad for dinner. I like salad as much as the next person, well maybe a bit more, but lettuce for dinner just sounds like you're going to be hungry after you're done, so we don't have salad for dinner very often. I know there are dinner salads that are really filling but they sound like... a lot of effort for a limited payoff. Also, i don't love all my food to be mixed and salad for dinner totally violates that. But I saw a recipe for Asian Kale Salad with Sesame Dressing on Deals to Meals and thought we would try it.

One of the other issues we have with salad for dinner is that Michael isn't a huge salad fan and I'm not a nice mom that makes him chicken nuggets for him and then makes grown up dinner, he has to have what we are having or a variation on what we were having. But this recipe reminded me of another one I saw on Deals to Meals for Chicken Spinach Pasta Salad, so I decided I would give Mikey's salad a base of bowtie pasta instead of greens and add everything else on top. It worked great! He even said "Mommy I love this dinner!", pretty sure he didn't eat the bell peppers but whatever. We ended up with some extra pasta and Brian and I threw it on our salads, it was a great addition.

The link above will take you to the original recipe, I had to tweak it to meet our taste, so if you want the original (which is probably the better option) click here . Shandra is a great cook (trust me, I've eaten her food), and her experiments are better than mine.  But here's what we did to tweak it- first off I ditched the kale. I know kale is healthy and the "in" vegetable but I'm gonna be honest, we don't eat raw kale. I can imagine Brian's reaction and it wouldn't have been great. I also ditched the romaine lettuce- it's fine but I don't love it. Instead I subbed spring mix greens for both- we love them, one box goes an extremely long way, and there is no chopping- still getting the dark leafy greens without chewing the kale. But try the kale it might be delightful! I also added another onion, the pasta (mentioned before), changed the chicken, and skipped the sesame seeds and added more seseame oil (mikey wouldn't eat seeds). So here's my recipe. I would guess it feeds 4, Shandra's feeds more than that, but we have fewer people in our family.

Yummy Asian Salad
Serves 4
1/2 bag coleslaw mix (the multicolored cabbage stuff)
2 big handfuls spring mix greens (or more, maybe I did 3, just add what you think you need)
1 red bell pepper diced
1-2 cans mandarin oranges
3-4 green onions diced.
2 chicken breasts (cooked)***
crunchy chow mein noodles (add these to individual plates)

for the dressing
1/3 c. canola oil
1/3 c. sugar
1 t. salt
3 T. soy sauce
1/4 c. rice vinegar
1-1 1/2 t. sesame oil
1 t. fresh ginger diced
blend all ingredients until emulsified, serve on the side.

Chop everything except the chicken, pasta, and chow mien noodles and serve in a large bowl. top with remaining ingredients and dressing as desired.

***ok so for the chicken. You can take two boneless, skinless chicken breasts, add salt and pepper and cook in the crockpot until done. It works fine, I don't really like that taste, but you might. I prefer to do that when I'm putting the chicken in something else. So I grilled ours. I used this marinade and grilled the chicken. I served it with a cutting board so that each person could chop the amount of chicken they wanted and add it to their salad (I don't like the chicken in the salad for a long period of time, i think it gets soggy from the veggies).

It would have been great if I had taken  picture, but i had no idea this would be such a hit, next time, cause there will be a next time! Enjoy!