Southwestern Steak Salad

This past weekend, my husband and I celebrated 5 wonderful years of marriage. We enjoyed time away from the kids, a concert and lots of good food! The word gluttony comes to mind. After our weekend at the hotel ended, I headed to the ATL to hang out with friends from college. It was a great time of catching up and more eating. So, needless to say, I'm ready to get back to salads and healthy eating.

Tonight we enjoyed a Southwestern Steak Salad. It was mixed salad greens and baby spinach, roasted corn, cucumbers, avocado, feta cheese and pan seared sirloin steak. It was topped off with a salsa-ranch dressing. The dressing was my fave. I made up some of my homemade salsa (maybe I'll get around to posting the recipe for that later in the week) and then mixed it with some light ranch dressing...yum-o!

Pasta Salad

Yesterday for lunch I whipped up an easy Orzo and Feta pasta salad. Here's what I used:

I started by cooking the orzo. I didn't have any chicken stock, so I boiled the orzo in water seasoned with lemon pepper and garlic powder.

While the Orzo was cooking (it only takes about 5-7 minutes) I chopped the parsley and mixed up the dressing.

For the dressing: olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and lemon juice. I just mixed it all together until I thought it tasted good and added a bit of salt and pepper.

Then all you do is pour the dressing on the cooked pasta, toss in the parsley and feta and mix it all together and here's what you get:

I didn't have any grape tomatoes, but they would taste yummy and make it a little prettier! Our summer of salads will be going on a brief break this weekend. It's our 5 year wedding anniversary, so we will be going off to our favorite resort and spa and NOT eating salads!

Bring on the Salad!

Our first salad of the summer was last night. But last night I wasn't a blogger. Today I am, so you'll get salad #2. Our first salad was a grilled chicken salad, which was so yummy I'm sure it will make a return at some point this summer.

BLT Salad with a Warm Dijon Vinaigrette
(recipe is for 1 main dish salad- increase or decrease ingredients accordingly)


2 handfuls of lettuce
(I used a combo of baby spinach and spring mix- which by the way you can get super cheap in a bulk bin at Whole Foods)
1 tomato, chopped
1 slice of bacon, diced (I used turkey bacon- Wellshire from Whole Foods- it was on sale and I had a coupon; cheap and healthier than regular bacon!)
1/4 avocado, diced (I know there's not an A in BLT, but I just really like avocado!)
1 handful of croutons (optional; I had some bread I had made, so I just crisped a bit of that up and threw on the salad)

Toss all salad ingredients together- then make the dressing

Warm Dijon Vinaigrette
2 T Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 green onion, chopped
1 T spicy brown mustard
1 T balsamic vinegar
1 T red wine vinegar (I have pomegranate infused red wine vinegar on hand, so that's what I used)
dash of salt
juice of 1 lemon

Heat the olive oil in a non stick pan and add the green onions. Once the onions have softened, add the mustard and both vinegars. Whisk together then turn off the heat. Add the salt and lemon juice. Stir together and then pour over the salad.

Enjoy the yummy goodness!

Even our almost 1 year old enjoyed a deconstructed BLT salad! Hers was more of a BATC salad; bacon, avocado, tomato and cheese salad!