salad

Healthy, Salads

Santa Fe Chicken Salad

Claudia's Cookbook - Santa Fe Chicken Salad 14

My friend Carly and I came up with a crazy idea to take a TRX exercise class every Monday night. For those of you who don’t know what TRX workouts entail, here are a couple buzzwords I like to use to describe the exercises: absolute hell, pain, and regret. I’m only half kidding. The workouts consist of using your own body strength and weight to suspend yourself in a number of different exercises. It’s tough, but apparently gets better/easier the more you go. Carly and I only did 30 minutes of the workout yesterday and we both can barely function. I literally cannot walk up or DOWN the stairs. Next week is a full hour of training. No pain, no gain, right? Pray for us.

I didn’t want all the energy and effort of working out to go to waste. Therefore, I am trying to eat (and now feature) some healthier and delicious recipes. This salad recipe has been on my radar for a long time. I absolutely love the Santa Fe Chicken Salad recipe at Earls Restaurant and I adore this copycat recipe. It’s one of my “go to” orders every time I dine there. The spicy/smoky flavour of the chicken, richness of the black beans and dates, combined with the sweet and sour flavours of the lime and peanut vinaigrette makes this a delicious, guilt free dish.

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Healthy, Salads

Edamame-berry Salad

Yesterday Claudia showed up at my house with, what looked like, 17 recycle bags full of food. She wanted to cook. She wanted to cook BAD. After a few hours and painful cramps in my feet, we were able to crank out a few great recipes for the blog! This salad is a newer addition to Claudia’s rotation. She was very eager to share it with you all. Not only is it super pretty, but it’s super healthy, fresh and delicious.

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Healthy, Salads

Cucumber & Tomato Salad

Before I get into the featured recipe, I wanted to introduce you to our newest addition to the family. I have had my eye on a sleek entry-level DSLR camera for quite some time. As I am quite loyal to the Canon brand of cameras, the EOS Rebel T3i was an easy choice. Therefore, from this moment on all my photos will be captured by this beauty. I hope you enjoy! Moving on…

This featured salad is my all-time favourite. It’s super light and simple to make. Plus the colours are gorgeous. My boyfriend makes this salad regularly for potlucks and it’s always a huge hit. Tomato, cucumber, onion and parsley. Perfect use of all your garden vegetables!

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Healthy, Salads

Broccoli Salad

I am not a vegetable person. I never have been. I probably never will be. Any time while growing up when I would complain to Claudia that I was hungry, her immediate response was “have a carrot”, or “have a cucumber”. This infuriated me, as I clearly wanted a cookie…or cookie dough (see image top right of the blog). I would react by pouting. I did a lot this as a child. Broccoli and cauliflower were my two veggie enemies. I despised them. Even to this day, I am not a part of their fan club. However, if integrated correctly, such as cauliflower in  Claudia’s Curryflower Soup, or broccoli in this Broccoli Salad recipe, I could eat veggies all day.

This dish is the ultimate summer salad. I’ve already had this salad about 5 times in the past 2 months, and it isn’t even summer yet. Perfect for potlucks, BBQ’s and even lunch. There are many variations to Broccoli Salad. I find this one of Claudia’s is by far my favourite.

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Healthy, Salads

Million Dollar Salad

Happy belated Easter! We hope yours was as fun and food-filled as ours!  We sincerely apologize for our lack of posts over the past month. With Claudia vacationing in Arizona and my work schedule becoming a little more hectic these days, we simply lost track of time. But enough excuses…we’re back and it feels great!

With all the snow gone in Winnipeg (hopefully for good this time) and the grass beginning to turn green, we decided it was time to feature a lighter dish with this post. We receive a lot of comments on our postings, mainly on the delicious, gooey desserts that we love to feature.  A huge thank you goes out to each and every one of you who have taken the time to comment and try our recipes! However, we received a particular request from my dear friend Richard in Ottawa who wanted us to feature a delicious yet healthy recipe. So Richard, this post for Million Dollar Salad is for you!

This salad is pretty much the easiest thing you could possibly make. The hardest part is chopping some lettuce and onion. The rest is pretty basic. You even get a workout shaking the salad dressing. This salad is simple but definitely does not hold back on any flavour. The fruit is sweet and the dressing is tart. It’s the perfect combination.

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