154.4 - Salads

I eat a salad just about everyday.

One of my favorite salads making a comeback this Spring is McD's southwest salad w/ grilled chicken. So tasty, not real high in calories (about 500 if you use half the dressing), but loaded with sodium (like 1200 mg total). I try to only eat a couple a week, but last week I think I ate it like 4 times.

I also really like Chik Fil A's grilled chicken garden salad with raspberry vinaigrette. I put the croutons and sunflower seeds on, and again it's about 500 calories.

There's also a new restaurant in Evansville called LA Grill that has the most delicious salad ever, the High Energy. It has avocado and pine nuts--very exotic stuff. It's around 500 calories, too. It's costly, though, so I only get it once or twice a month.

So lunch is a restaurant salad 2 or 3 days a week. The other days I bring stuff from home, like a frozen Amy's Kitchen meal or (gasp) leftovers from something I cooked (that doesn't happen often enough, unfortunately).

If I don't have salad for lunch, I make one at home for dinner. One of my favorites is easy peasy--Boca's spicy chik'n patty cut up into bites, salad mix (my favorite is the 50/50--spring mix & baby spinach), a small handful of pecans, and Newman's Lite Honey Mustard dressing. This is only 350 calories and super tasty.

Now, my new favorite salad doesn't even require dressing. Roni has created a faux McD's southwest salad, and I actually like it better than McD's. It's clean tasting--not heavy at all. It was a snap to make, since I had chicken breasts already cooked & frozen (and they taste completely awesome--thanks Vickie for the "freeze meat after you cook it" tip). I had it for lunch today and have 4 more servings to enjoy this week. I added a few crumbled corn chips to the top for some crunch and omitted the onions (I don't like raw onions). I was skeptical of the "no dressing" thing, but it really didn't need it. There are so many flavors in the chicken/corn/bean mix, it's all you need with a big bed of lettuce.

Don't you want to eat a salad now?

***

I only worked 2 1/2 hours today at the office. Luke's eyes are worse and it's most likely pink eye. So he had to stay home from day care and Mark's sister watched him for a couple of hours this morning. I called the doctor and he called in a Rx for pink-eye eye drops. I'm ticked that wasn't done yesterday when I took him in because now we are a day behind healing his eyes, but they didn't look like they do today so I guess it was an honest mistake by the Doc. Luke had another terrible night sleeping (and, obviously so did I), and I'm praying the eye meds will start to work by tonight, but I'm guessing I'm in for night 3 of a rough evening. He'll have 4 doses of antibiotic by tonight, so maybe things will be better.

DH is supposed to be home tonight after his client meeting, and I told him I *have* to go running tonight and he can stay with the kids. I haven't been running since Saturday, and the weather has been freaking gorgeous and I'M MISSING IT. I am not happy about this, let me tell you. It's going to be stinking 90 degrees before we know it and I'll have missed our 2 week window of lovely spring temps.

I have started reading PQ's book, but have just not had enough time to read and am barely into chapter 2. Promise to post a review when I'm done.