Strawberry Salad

Summer time is the perfect time for salads. After a week of VBS, fast food and crackers from my pantry and Drew being out of town eating mainly his momma's good cooking and eating out, we decided tonight we needed a little bit of green in our diet. Strawberry salad is a recipe a friends mom gave me for our wedding. I didn't try it until a few months ago and since then we've had it several times. It's delicious, sweet and salty and fresh. Tonight we added chicken, and grilled it on the stove with honey and olive oil to make it a little sweet as well. Here is the recipe including the chicken I used. I bought all the ingredients for this tonight from Wal-Mart for $20. This is a great price because it will feed us SEVERAL times, as well as make a complete dinner for the evening. Can't eat out for that cheap! Included in this recipe is a blush vinaigrette salad dressing and it is fantastic! (I did not purchase the ingredients for this, because I already had them all on hand.)

Here is the recipe of deliciousness!

Strawberry Salad

2 bags of baby spinach

Handful of cashew pieces, crunched up in a baggy

5-6 strawberries cut up

A handful of craisins

A handful of feta cheese

1-2 chicken breasts grilled up into strips with honey

The great thing about this is you can do it for YOUR taste. I like it with more feta and cashews because it helps balance out the sweet of the rest of the foods and the dressing.

Blush Vinaigrette Dressing

1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar

1/4 cup of olive oil

1/4 cup of sugar

1/4 tsp garlic salt

1/4 tsp celery salt

Mix it all together and shake well! Use soon after making.

I'm not the best with presentation, and I had already tossed this before I took the picture, but here is the deliciousness of the salad in a picture.

Try it and let me know what you think!

Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

There is nothing quite like Chicken noodle soup. It's good on sick days, rainy days, cold days or smack dab in the middle of summer when you've run out of other food in the house. I always keep ingredients for chicken noodle soup on hand. You can eat it with crackers or try it with a bread bowl. We pick up bread bowls from Panera Bread for about $1.50 per bowl. Cut out the top, add some soup and you have a filling and yummy meal. I took this recipe from one on allrecipes.com but added a lot of things to it. I guess you could say this is the first recipe I've really altered or created on my own.

Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

7 cups of water
4 cubes of chicken bouillon
2 chicken breasts cut up into cubes
1/3 cup of carrots diced
1//3 cup of celery diced
1 can chicken broth
1/2 onion
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 half bag (1/2 pound) of egg noodles

Boil the 7 cups of water with the 4 bouillon cubes. Cut up the raw chicken into pieces and add it to the boiling water. Cut up your carrots and celery and add them in as well. When the chicken is boiled through and the vegetables are raw, add the can of chicken broth and 1/2 the onion. (You will take the onion out at the end, so do not chop it. Add it to the soup whole for flavor.) Add your noodles, cooking them for the time it says on the bag. About 8 minutes. When you add your noodles go ahead and add the can of cream of chicken and the can of cream of celery soup, mixing it in until it is dissolved. Let it boil until the noodles are cooked. Remove the onion and serve.

This makes a whole lot and is delicious! Add pepper or salt for your own personal seasoning. The bouillon and soups make it plenty salty. Enjoy!