The Week of Salads

My weekends always consist of an assortment of events. This past weekend was packed with a party, dinner, and lunch outing the following day. And the weekend coming up my best friend and her husband are coming to visit and no doubt we're going out on Saturday night and drinking some beer the rest of the time. So to neutralize our weekend eating I declared this week 'The Week of Salads'.

A simple google search for 'tasty salads' and I went with the very first link:

38 Quick & Delicious Summer Salads

From there I picked out a few that shared similar ingredients, and of course what looked delicious to me:

• Spinach and Strawberry Salad
• Chilled Vegetable Salad
• Peanutty Coleslaw
• Chicken-Horseradish Salad
• Farmer's Market Pasta
• Classic Caesar Salad (not from the link above)

Any well-made, hearty salad is pretty good in my opinion, but my favorite out of this group was the Chicken-Horseradish Salad. I did make some adjustments to the recipe. Sorry, I couldn't justify buying a container or horseradish for the 2/3 TBSPs I would need but I knew I had horseradish mustard and, well, that's close enough.

Chicken Horseradish (mustard) Salad

• 3 cups cooked chicken
• 1/2 cup scallions, diced
• 2 celery sticks, chopped
• 1/4 cup pecans, chopped
• 1/4 cup red onion, diced
• 2/3 cup mayonnaise
• 2-3 tbsp horseradish mustard
• 2 tsp fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp lemon zest
• Salt and pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl; cover and chill for 1-2 hours.

Combine with package of romaine lettuce and done!

I know this seems pretty simple, but sometimes it takes basic ingredients to make what could be a boring salad into a 'worthy-of-a-meal' salad. I could easily add this into the weekly rotation for dinner.