Sweet and Sour Chicken Salad

I often buy a rotisserie chicken, it’s a quick and easy meal. I’m careful of course, all rotisserie chickens are not equal. I read the ingredients until I found one that had no soy, canola, or corn oil. But since I live alone, this chicken always has lots of meat left over. I do so love chicken salad but even that can get boring when always made the same. I’ve added curry powder and made curried chicken salad which is delicious but I recently tried using a sweet and sour dressing, much like one used for coleslaw. Delicious, very easy and tasty at the end of summer when we’re getting tired of the same old salads.

I like to pulse my cooked chicken in my food processor to produce a slightly chunky chicken. Don’t take it to the extent of puree, just a fairly rough chop, almost like cooked ground chicken meat. For 4 servings, dice or pulse:

2 cooked chicken breasts, of medium size

Remove from food processor or cutting board into a bowl. Dice or pulse:

4-5 stalks celery, cleaned and quartered

4-5 scallions, cleaned and quartered

1/2 cup shredded carrots (or diced carrots)

Add to the chicken meat. I also add:

1/2 cup cooked baby peas

Mix these ingredients together. In a separate smaller bowl make the dressing using:

1 cup vegan mayonnaise

1 good dash hot sauce (optional)

2 tablespoons vinegar

2 tablespoons honey, agave nectar or date syrup

2 tablespoons dill pickle relish (or minced dill pickle)

Salt and pepper to taste

Whisk the dressing to combine and then add to the meat mixture. Mix well, chill and serve over a bed of mixed greens. Tomatoes and avocado on the side are a nice addition to this meal. I’ll often also garnish my chicken salad with pumpkin seeds or mix into the salad sesame or poppy seeds.

Sweet and Spicy Chicken Salad

Every once in a great while I buy a rotisserie chicken at the store because, like everyone, I just don’t feel like cooking. I bought one several days ago and like so often happens, found I couldn’t eat all of it before it would spoil. In those cases, I usually dice up the chicken breasts and freeze them for later use. It’s amazing, I don’t understand why, but when cooked chicken is frozen, it makes such a better chicken salad than fresh chicken. Perhaps because it’s really cold? Anyway, try putting the diced chicken in the freezer for about an hour before making the salad and let me know if you agree with me that it has a better taste.

For the salad:

2 rotisserie chicken breasts diced

3-4 celery stalks, diced

2 tablespoons dill relish (or up to 1/4 cup depending on taste)

2 tablespoons pumpkin seeds, or diced jicama, or diced water chestnuts (just looking for more crunch)

1 avocado, diced

For the dressing:

1/2 to 3/4 cup vegan mayonnaise (depending on how much chicken there is)

1 tablespoon hot sauce

1/2 teaspoon herbamare (herbed salt)

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

1/8 teaspoon ground black (or white) pepper

2 tablespoons honey (or agave or coconut nectar, or date syrup)

Mix all the ingredients and serve with lettuce. Garnish, if you have some, which I didn’t, with chives or scallions. Also, it’s delicious with sliced fresh strawberries or tomatoes. Makes 4 servings.

Chicken and Cranberry Salad with Green Goddess Dressing (dairy-free, gluten-free, egg-free, nut-free)

As all my allergies progressed, one of the things that most bothered me was a sensitivity to leafy green vegetables. No more salad, what was I going to do! Then I discovered that I could eat red leaf lettuces, what a relief. Now I have a salad almost daily and here’s one of my favorites. I really like various textures in my salads so I add crunchy ingredients as well as softer ones. Green Goddess dressing usually has walnuts in it but since I’m allergic to nuts, I used pumpkin seeds instead. You could substitute sunflower seeds.

You’ll need for the salad (for 2 entries or 4-6 side salads):

1 head of red Romaine, cleaned and broken into bite-size pieces
1 cucumber sliced
2-3 small tomatoes
2 wedges of jicama, diced
2 stalks of celery, diced
several scallions or some red onion diced, optional
8 ounces of cooked chicken, diced
1/4 to 1/2 cup of dried cranberries (I used the kind sweetened with fruit juice and unsulphered)

For the dressing, in a food processor put:

1 ripe avocado, skinned and pitted
1/4 cup dried parsley, or 1/2 cup fresh parsley (you can add more if you like parsley; not one of my favorite herbs so I didn’t use much)
2 tablespoons avocado oil
2 tablespoons lime juice (or lemon juice if you prefer)
2 tablespoons ground pumpkin seeds
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 tablespoon vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste
Water to get to dressing consistency, 1/4-1 cup (my dressing came out fairly thick and I used 1/2 cup of water)

Blend until creamy and all ingredients are combined. Here, again, I used some roasted whole coriander seeds that I pulsed in my spice grinder so they were not fully ground and the pumpkin seeds were also only partially ground. This added some crunchy texture to the dressing.

BLAT (Bacon, Lettuce, Avocado and Tomato)Burger (dairy-free, gluten-free)

This is one of my favorites. I eat one of these sandwiches for lunch nearly every week. Easy to make and delicious. The creaminess of the avocado with the acidity of the tomato and crunch of the bacon and lettuce makes it well worth the calories. I served mine with a side of 4 Bean Salad.

You’ll need:

Gluten-free bread or roll
3 slices of tomato
2-3 pieces of lettuce
2-3 slices of cooked bacon (I use the turkey bacon)
1 burger patty (mine is turkey which I make thin so it cooks very quickly but I have to be very careful not to overcook it)
1 slice of non-dairy cheese (if you want a cheeseburger)
ketchup or mayo depending on your taste

While the burger and bacon are cooking, toast the bread if you want or warm the roll. I start with the avocado, then the tomato slices, then the lettuce, bacon, and finally the burger. I put the ketchup or mayo on the second slice of bread and there you have it. Very easy, yet so tasty.