Anne's Chopped Salad

I made a chopped salad for dinner. My mother asked where I got the recipe.

"There's no recipe. It's a salad!"

OK, fine. For your amusement, here's the salad for lazy people that are also picky eaters:

1 bag of romaine lettuce - because I don't like that goofy "field greens" stuff

1 package Purdue Short Cuts (the pre-cooked and sliced stuff), oven roasted

1/2 package reduced fat blue cheese - I forget the brand

Some shredded carrots

One cucumber

Croutons

Craisins

Salad dressing of choice - I used reduced fat Hidden Valley Ranch

So. First I dump the bag of lettuce into my biggest mixing bowl. Then I cut up the cucumber the way my daddy taught me (before seedless cucumbers were invented). Use a carrot peeler to peel the skin-

I read somewhere that if you are not eating the skin of the fruit/vegetable, that organics are really unnecessary because the bad chemical-whatever doesn't get through to the actual vegetable. I just don't enjoy the texture of cucumber skin.

Then slice it in half, long-ways. Take the utensil of your choice and dig out the seeds. I once used a spoon, but am now too lazy to walk acroos the kitchen to get one. So I used the knife, making my mother happy about washing one less thing. My father would hate it because he is convinced that I am going to slice off a finger, the way I cut produce. Good thing he didn't see me with the chicken and the kitchen scissors. Once the seeds are out, slice in half long-ways again, then chop. Repeat for the rest of the cucumber.

Toss in shredded carrots. I just bought a bag, but I am not above using my baby Cuisinart for the job.

Add bag of chicken. After I used the kitchen scissors to open the package, I used them to chop up the chicken a bit further. Because it is a chopped salad.

Add blue cheese. I used less than half the container, in fear of overdoing it. But half the container would have been fine.

Add in some craisins. Enough so the pretty color stands out. Or something.

I mixed the salad up and then filled a bowl so that my mother could take some to work tomorrow. Before croutons and dressing.

Then I added croutons and dressing. The secret, for me, to the salad dressing, is use less than you think you need. Because you can always add more.

Then I mixed it all up and this is what it looked like:

Actually, it looks pretty pale. But that's what happens when you use ranch dressing. But I thought it was very tasty.

I had a bowl, my mother had a bowl, there was the one I set aside and there was some left over. So I am going to say this makes four bowls of salad. We also had some odd, but good pumpkin bread from a new bakery in town and it was a nice, light spring dinner.