Good For You Chicken Salad

This is so good. You will never make chicken salad the old way again.
Years ago, when my husband (then boyfriend) lived on his own, his mom would bring him food. She would come down and load up his fridge. He brought out this "salad" and a bag of tortilla chips one evening. He didn't know what was in it (forcing me to back create it). One bite and I was hooked. What was in it? Hmmm Bite.. , Bite, OOOh not mayo. sour cream. YUM, and onions, and cillantro? WOW.
A few years later, when my best friend was living with me and my boyfriend (now husband), we were hungry. We had one left over chicken breast, from dinner the night before, and 1 cucumber, and 2 green onions (pretty sad looking. but edible), and cellery,  and cottage cheese, and a little bit of sour cream oh and some lettuce and cabbage (pathetic looking, But edible). we just jumped in and started dicing up everything. We used all of the sour cream, not enough to really bring it all together, so we used some cottage cheese. salt and pepper. IT was DELISH.
So here it is. We have played with it over the years and you can too. But the basics are that this is a delicious way to make Chicken Salad.
This is one of those recipes, where if you can make it for 2 you can make it for 12.
This is the for 2 recipe.

1 chicken breast (2 small thin breasts) sliced thin and then diced.
1/2 cucumber peeled, seeded, and diced
2 scallions sliced thin
1 celery stick diced thin.
1 tbs finely diced cillantro (you could omit, or swap with parsley or basil)

1/2 c cottage cheese

1/2 c light sour cream (if you like the extra tang, you could use greek yogurt)
salt and pepper, and garlic powder (we use it on everything.)
Basically, dice it all up, then toss it in a bowl. Add sour cream, cottage cheese, stir to combine. DONE. Don't put the salt in NOW. put a tiny sprinkle on when you want to eat it. if you do it now, it will draw the moisture out of the cucumber and onions and make your chicken salad wet... It doesn't taste bad. just wet.
NOW what to do with this.
Serve it like a sandwich. Soft breads for soft fillings. So a potato bread, or onion rolls, would be great.

Serve it with crackers, or chips. Top it with some chopped tomato or avocado, and eat like a dip. This is Hubby's favorite way to eat it.

Serve about 1/2-3/4 of a cup on top of a green salad with light vinaigrette. The salad offers a creamy consistency and protein. Plus if you do it on a salad of mixed greens with spinach, you are getting protein X2 and calcium X2. This would be a great work lunch.

You can change this up A MILLION WAYS>
off the top of my head. instead of cillantro, use a little Curry powder.
use left over chicken. Today I had a great buy on garlic and herb chicken breast, single packs from the lunch meat section. I have done it with rotisserie chicken, grilled chicken, pulled chicken would work too, but you would want it to be pretty dry. (maybe lay it on paper towels while you dice the veg)
I bet a salsa baked chicken would be good, nice spicy flavor. I would scrape off any extra salsa. But.. You see where this is going. Don't like cucumber? Omit it, double up on the celery, or add a little carrot. Bell pepper would be good for color and crunch. Start with this recipe, but then the sky is the limit.

Lasagna Roll Ups- Now and Later

This is the recipe, photos, and results for the Lasagna Roll Ups. I made up this recipe while I was pregnant, and wanted to figure out a way to make lasagna, that could be a good freezer meal. It has almost always been exactly this recipe. I combined three recipes, and used tips from my sister (the vegan one.. not sure if I have mentioned her before. She is vegan, and loves to cook.)
YAY. I remembered to take pics the whole time.

so here is the recipe.



1/2 pound each ground turkey and turkey sausage
2 1/2 cups diced mushrooms
1 onion diced
2 cups zucchini diced
1 box of lasagna
1 jar of sauce ( dealers choice, we use four cheese)
2 cups of cheese (Italian blend or 1/2c Parmesan and 1 1/2 cups Mozzarella)
2 tbs olive oil
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 teaspoon garlic powder
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
1 block soft tofu
1 box of lasagna noodles

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add 1 tbs of olive oil and 1 tbs of salt (IF YOU WANT. Some people swear by all of this. I recommend the oil though because the pasta will be sitting for a few minutes while you prep the roll ups.)
Heat a large pan over medium heat. Add 1 tbs of olive oil. Saute' mushrooms, zucchini, onions, and garlic. Cook until the onions are translucent and the mushrooms and zucchini are soft. Divide the mushroom, zucchini mixture.
Combine 1/2 of it with the tofu. Add the garlic powder,
and the grated Parmesan cheese.
This will replicate ricotta in a standard lasagna recipe.
Cook the turkey and sausage. (I use the same pan that I cooked the veggies in.)
Cook the lasagna noodles, just a little short of al dente. (if you cook by the times. do it for about 2 minutes less.) Pull the noodles out and lay them out on a cookie sheet.

So now you have, everything cooked. Lay it out and prep your area to make 3 meals worth. This can be one meal for dinner tonight, and 2 freezer meals, or 3 freezer meals.

This is how I set up to make these tonight. I am right handed. so I work right to left. Right. sauce (no need to heat it), the veggie and tofu mixture, the cooked turkey and sausage, and the rest of the cooked veggies. Middle, I am using a cookie sheet to prep the rolls on, above the cookie sheet I have the lasagna noodles in a roasting pan. (it was close and easy.) I have the black cookie sheet, for the ones I am freezing, and the baking pan for the ones I am cooking for tonight.

First coat the noodles in a little bit of sauce. As you can see in the above picture.
Second spread 2 tsp of the veggie tofu mixture across the noodle. Leaving about 1/2 an inch at the bottom of the noodle. The far left picture above, you just layer everything on. I do the tofu mixture, cheese, meat, and then the veggie. You can do a second layer of cheese. all these layers should be about 2 tsps. you don't want too much in there, then it is hard to roll.

Once you have rolled all of the noodles. It should look like this.Tonight I had enough to make 17 rolls. There was a little meat and veggie left. I could have done meat and veg in the two I made with just cheese. Instead I just topped the roll ups with the meat and veg, then the remainder of the sauce, and then about a 1/4 c of cheese. (whatever is left.)

< This is what it looked like about to come out of the oven. And that> is what it looked like in the freezer.
This is what it looks like once I bagged them up with the directions and the cheese with it.When you want to eat these for dinner. DO NOT DEFROST. Prep a baking pan, with about 1/2 cup of spaghetti sauce. Lay these in the pan, cover with sauce and top with cheese. Bake 40-45 minutes in a 350.

This is what it looked like for dinner last night. I usually have one, sometimes two. I was going to make a salad, but ran out of time. This would be great with the garlic monkey bread.

This is the first in a series of Freezer Meals. The second of a Fast meals pictorials.