Fruit and chicken salad

Before anything, I'd like to say sorry for it having been almost eight months exactly since I've last posted in my poor little food blog. Really, I started this with the best of intentions. Back in December, I was working at a local restaurant (an English tea room, to be precise) and was excited at the chance to expand my skills at work and to share my love of food here. That job didn't work out, which was a big blow to my ego. (And just for the record, I was let go due to my professional inexperience and not outright incompetence. So there.)

Still, this was back in January, and you know how the beginning of a new year always is; no longer having to cook all day, I thought I would be cooking a lot more at home. Me being me, that didn't exactly happen either.

But now, I feel a renewed sense of purpose (it's amazing what a few nights of good sleep after weeks of sleep deprivation will do), and inspiration as well. My cousin/bff EC was in town for about a week recently, and we ate at restaurants way too much - usually junk food, but we sneaked in a couple "quality" meals too.

One of my favorites was the 'limited time only' Chopped Fruit, Gorgonzola and Grilled Chicken Salad from Uno Chicago Grill. According to their website, this salad is "A veritable fruit bowl of chopped pears, grapes and Craisins® mixed with grilled chicken, Gorgonzola, glazed walnuts and salad greens tossed with a low fat blueberry pomegranate vinaigrette dressing." Well, according to my taste buds, this salad is delicious!

I plan to do my grocery shopping tonight when it's cooled down a bit, and make this salad for dinner tomorrow. It'll be quick, cold and yummy; perfect for a summer weeknight when you get home from work.

Ingredients

Lettuce, torn into bite-sized pieces
1 pear
1 apple
gorgonzola cheese
walnuts, coarsely chopped
red seedless grapes, halved
Craisins
grilled chicken, diced
salad dressing

The one thing I remember clearly about the lettuce in the Uno's salad was that it was way too big. Why do restaurants make salads so difficult to eat? I'll probably use a mixture of Romaine and baby spinach, yummy! And I generally dislike pears, but this salad was so good that I'll try it when I make this salad. For the apple, I'm going to go with an American Cameo if I can find it; if not, Granny Smith is always a good choice. Note to self: sprinkle the apple and pear with lemon juice so they don't turn brown, yuck.

As for the chicken, I think one of the greatest conveniences in modern cooking has to be those packages of pre-cooked grilled chicken from Foster Farms. Yeah, home-cooked chicken would taste better, but I'm not going to heat up the kitchen on a 90+ summer day if I can get around it. For a vegetarian version, you could so obviously and easily leave the chicken out.

The Uno's salad came with a blueberry-pomegranate dressing that was... interesting (it definitely tasted low-fat; it's one thing to be low-fat, but to taste it is another). I'll look over what dressings the store has, but I might just go with the Girard's white balsamic vinaigrette I have in my fridge. It has a subtle orange taste that I think will work with this recipe.

Whether I cook more often or no, I'm going to update this blog a lot more; I've got even more yummies I haven't shared yet!