Say What, Grilled Salad?!

When making our grocery list this weekend, hubby and I really tried to think of items we already had at home that we could turn into meals. With it being the end of the month the grocery budget was looking slim (read my post about budgeting here), and we wanted needed to challenge ourselves to keep the grocery bill small.

Side note: This is the kind of fun part of having a budget and sticking to it...we are forced to be creative, and it feels really good to know we are not being wasteful because we are using items that would otherwise get ignored or go bad sitting in the pantry.

Our challenge: A package of frozen chicken breast tenders and week old crusty white bread
BTW--the bread was left over from some rocking Mediterranean paninis. Long story short...slice and butter your bread. Fill with slices of fresh mozzarella cheese, roasted red peppers, and olive tapenade. Grill on a panini press, George Foreman, or in a plain old pan!

The solution: Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad

The result: Total deliciousness! 

The Ingredients:

Stale crusty bread
Salt
Pepper
Garlic powder
Olive oil
Chicken breast tenders
Caesar dressing
Romaine hearts
Shaved parmesan cheese

The recipe:

Croutons
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Cut your stale bread into cubes. Put the bread cubes onto a baking sheet and brush (or drizzle) with olive oil. Season with salt, pepper, and garlic powder to taste. The more seasoning the better, in my opinion. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.

Salad
Rinse and pat dry your chicken tenders. Put them into a bowl with some caesar dressing to marinate. *We used a vinaigrette based caesar. I am not sure how creamy caesar would grill up...probably not well.

Cut your romaine hearts in half, leaving on the bottom core to keep the lettuce together. Brush both sides of the romaine with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.

Once your grill is preheated (medium-high to high heat) put your chicken tenders on to start grilling. Once they are halfway done put on your lettuce. You will grill the romaine until it has a light char on both sides.

To serve--Cut off bottom core from romaine hearts and put onto your plate. Top with several grilled chicken tenders, homemade croutons, and shaved parmesan cheese. Drizzle with dressing and enjoy!

Here is the dressing that we used:

I know that ideally homemade dressing is the best, but sometimes you just need to go with bottled. Plus, do you know what the "secret" ingredient is in caesar dressing?! I don't like to think about it, and I am certainly not going to try and make it myself! I love buying Newman's Own dressing when I get the bottled stuff because it is all natural and the profits go to charity...win, win!

I served the salads with some fresh watermelon for a light summer meal. I had fun pulling out our summer picnic ware to create a nice dinner on the deck for me and hubby!

Have you ever grilled lettuce? It was a first for us and we loved how it turned out. Yum!