Cranberry Avocado Almond Spinach Salad with Roasted Chicken, Feta Cheese and Orange Poppy Seed Vinaigrette

Looking through Pinterest for dinner recipes after my one week clean eating detox, I found a few spinach salad recipes.  What I have been looking for are ingredients that I would normally have in the fridge/pantry, agreeable palate for everyone in the family, wallet friendly and just plain awesome tasting.

I started off with a roasted chicken using the Big Batch Roasted Chicken recipe.  The recommendation here is to take out the chicken, place it on the roasting pan, season it and leave it out for thirty minutes so the meat can absorb some of the simple flavors as a marinade.  Once the kids came home for school, I roasted the chicken then turned off the oven while we went to dance class so that when I came home, I could remove the skin off the chicken and the chicken off the bone.

Next, I called my kitchen helpers into the room and began making the salad.  My helpers were aged 5 and 6 so sharing was very important as was them not using a knife. I was sure to keep a set of thongs nearby so they could easily toss the toppings into the already prepared, pre-cut spinach.  The girls laughed and giggled about avocado.  Then feta cheese then they asked each other what was on their list of favorites:  food, color(s), drink etc etc.  The conversation could go on for hours.

We followed this recipe and I know adaptations would work well.  It's a great salad to mix in fruit like mandarin oranges or blueberries, make vegan by removing the cheese and chicken as I felt the cheese was unnecessary.  The Cranberry Avocado Almond Spinach Salad with Roasted Chicken, Feta Cheese was a grand slam, even with my young kitchen helps.  The AWESOME Orange Poppy Seed Vinaigrette should be bottled, it's that good!  Phenomenal.  Fresh.  Perfecto!

Hope you enjoy,

Enriching Ego

Estimated Nutritional Value:

Calories: 370 Carbs: 19 Fat: 22 Protein: 26 Sodium: 281 Sugar: 12

(provided by:  Food Diary)

Day 4 of the Clean Eating Challenge

Here we roll into day four.  The deal with this challenge is not that the meals are hard to put together but I am feeling a little uneasy about next week's menu.  I am going to pray about branching out to a total strange to me menu.

The morning meal was a fantastic feta cheese and scallion omelet.  I think this meal is great and I feel more confident with making omelets.  If I were trying to adhere to this challenge, I would have sliced tomatoes.  I did add shallots and asparagus to my husband's breakfast and he was pleased!

Ease of preparation: I rate this a two or three.  You have to feel comfortable enough cooking eggs, but really, its all in the oil.  I sauteed the scallions a wee bit then add in scrambled egg finally adding feta cheese.  Not hard, just watch it not to burn.
Satiety:  This was a forkful for sure.  Really a go to breakfast for me and its a great basic omelet.  
Serving Size: I used two eggs in the omelet I am showing  you in the picture.  
Flavor:  Great basic breakfast.  Salt and pepper this and having feta cheese with my breakfast is a real treat!  

For a late lunch I bring you a Greek Style salad with lentils and lime vinaigrette.  

Ease of preparation: all I had to do here was cut the cuke and tomato! Bagged spinach, leftover lentils and a sprinkle of feta.  Pretty simple!   

Satiety: I can't comment on this section because I could not get through five forkfuls of this recipe.  

Serving Size: I grabbed two decent handfuls of spinach and added as much of the rest that I wanted.  

Flavor:  BLAH.  I couldn't get through this salad. What made the salad inedible were the lentils. They were mushy and congealed.  

Day 4 dinner was reheated roasted chicken with spinach and roasted spinach.  My picture shows a dissembled plate.  Sometimes I prefer my food separate rather than mixed together.  The picture found on the Buzz Feed Clean Eating Challenge shows their take which is a salad.  Eat your food however it works for you.  

Ease of preparation: Roasted most of the meal so it was fairly simple.  Not to mention grabbed a handful of spinach.  

Satiety: The portion size was good and I would imagine it will fill me a good while.  I am not sure anything but the protein will sustain me until morning.   

Serving Size: I grabbed two decent handfuls of spinach and added as much of the rest that I wanted.  

Flavor:  I enjoyed the roasted fennel.  It was like eating a roasted onion, smooth and a wee bit sweet.  Everything was fine, I am not sure I feel like the combination was great.  The meal was certainly missing something.  As far as a recommendation, this would not be on my list of recommendations simply because I feel like it was plain.  I feel there could have been a better execution of all of these flavors combined and still provide for a clean meal.  

Best meal of the day by far was breakfast.  Tomorrow is another good day so let's get some sleep and dream of growing our own spinach and fennel plants.

Day 1 of The Clean Eating Challenge

Kale and Banana Smoothie starts off my day one!  Five ingredients blended together to make a fantastically green concoction.  Here is the link to the recipe.  Kale, Almond Milk, Frozen Banana, Vanilla extract and Peanut Butter (*recipe calls for almond butter, I am using what I have).  

My husband was the first to leave the house this morning so I offered to make him one.  He tasted it and decided it wasn't for him so off he went with an empty belly.  

To rate these recipes, I will mention ease of preparation, cost of ingredients, satiety, serving size per recipe and flavor.

Ease of preparation:  Scale of 1 (being easiest) to 10, this is a 2; Very easy.  You only need to have frozen unpeeled bananas overnight as well as have the ingredients on hand.
Cost of ingredients:  Inexpensive.
Satiety:  within 20 minutes of eating it, my belly is not stuffed yet full.
Serving Size:  This recipe will yield close to two cups of smoothie, well at least 1.5 cups easy.
Flavor:  This smoothie tastes mostly like peanut butter.  Drinking this was not difficult but the flavor was not sweet.

Next up, is lunch! I had to wait four hours between meals so by the time it came, I was hungry yet still reasonable.  Today's lunch was a Shaved Asparagus salad with Shallots and Fried Egg Salad and the recipe can be found here.

Ingredients for this recipe included eggs, asparagus, arugula, shallots, tomato, lemon juice, olive oil, parsley, salt/pepper and feta cheese.  We used the entire container of arugula and we were able to serve three platefuls of salad.  

Wow, what a salad! I like my egg slightly runny and it complimented the warm, al dente asparagus. Did I mention that I didn't think I even liked Asparagus?!  Yep, I asked my husband yesterday if he liked them because in ten years I had never bought them from the store or asked for them in a restaurant.  Neither, had I seen him eat them.

Ease of preparation:  Scale rating:  4. I could not peel the asparagus, as the recipe suggest so I just sliced them lengthwise and cut them in half across. The shallots will cook fast so keep your eye on the pan. Frying the egg, can always go either way; broken or perfect.  If you prefer a runny egg, then opt for what you enjoy!  I love, love, love feta cheese so having it for lunch made my heart sing. This salad is served best when it's warm but not terrible as I had two plates, the second which was room temperature.  I added a little olive oil as a dressing to give it congruence.

Cost of ingredients:  Estimated cost is between $5-$6, mainly due to the amount of arugula you use and the cost of asparagus.  Still affordable.
Satiety:  I was able to suppress my appetite until it was snack time, three hours later.
Serving Size:  This recipe will yield close to six cups of salad and is a great meal to serve to guest, pending you can serve it warm.  You can cook as many eggs as you prefer and I imagine a hard-boiled egg wouldn't be bad here either.
Flavor:  This salad tasted green.  Your body is screaming with joy once you've cleaned your plate and licked your fork.  Favorite meal of the day.

Here is my portion of the salad, in which did not hesitate to help myself to a second serving. 

Guilt-Free, I may add!  

I am omitting the pictures of my snacks.  So far, I've had peeled and sliced whole carrots and red pepper hummus for a snack and soon, it will be a nice pear with peanut butter, or almond butter if you have it.  

Finally, the final meal of the Day 1 Clean Eating Challenge!  

Tonight, I serve you a Roasted Chicken Bowl with Couscous, Kale and Big Orange Vinaigrette.  I was able to use some leftover chicken that I had roasted this weekend in place of baking new chicken, so stay tuned later this week for a review on their Big Batch Roasted Chicken Breast.  I also changed quinoa to couscous because that is what I  had in my pantry!  I am no nutritionist but I bet these two are pretty close nutritionally.

Ease of preparation:  Scale rating: 4.  You should prep everything while your chicken is roasting so you can progress in steps beforehand then bam!   I cooked the couscous first and let it sit on the counter top at least 10 minutes. I made the vinaigrette dressing and let that sit while I finished up the kale.  Steaming the kale was easy but be sure to strain in before mixing it all together.

Cost of ingredients:  Inexpensive.
Satiety:  stuffed.  My palate is fresh, my teeth are happy and life is good.
Serving Size:  This recipe will yield close to six cups. I wouldn't think adding more kale would hurt anyone so be sure if you are adding more kale, that you make more dressing.
Flavor:  The kale was pleasant, not bitter.  I don't know if it was because of the orange vinaigrette that helped or the light steam.  The couscous had no real flavor but I did add some olive oil and salt into the water.

In case you were interested, this is the orange vinaigrette.  My interpretation is to squeeze juice from an orange and not use sweetened orange juice that you would drink. 

The flavor of this was good, not sweet at all.  

Who doesn't love making their own dressings?!

I hope you have enjoyed today's posts and I hope the pictures encourage you to make this your own.  I will not post specific recipes as the link is the best way to organize your week.  I am now off to clean up the kitchen and prep my oatmeal for tomorrow.  I can't wait to see how overnight oats with chia seeds and blueberries taste.