Side Salad Sunday

 Tonight's recipes were inspired by leftovers.  We had baked potatoes left over from the other night so thought I'd make a salad.  My husband loves potato salad, but I don't love giving him such a mayo-laden, fat- loaded side dish so I lightened it up a bit with some nonfat plain yogurt and he can't tell the difference! (That's when you know you've won!)

 

 Low Fat Potato Salad
-Serves 8

6 baked potatoes
3 stalks celery
1 bunch fresh parsley or dried parsley flakes

1/2 cup plain yogurt

1/4 cup mayo

1 TB. mustard

1/4 cup dill relish

salt and pepper to taste

-Peel and dice potatoes in a large bowl.  Add remaining ingredients and mix together.  Chill for a few hours before serving.

-No yogurt? No problem.  You can add pureed white beans in the place of the yogurt.  This will give the salad a beanier flavor, but will still bring down the fat.

-This recipe can be used to make chicken salad, pasta salad, or tuna salad.  Simply replace the potatoes with chicken, cooked pasta or tuna!


This second recipe was at my husband's request.  There is a Chinese Chicken Salad sold in the Deli at our local grocery store that he loves, but it is $4 a lb!  I made this one tonight will our commod foods plus a $1 bag of coleslaw mix and a 20 cent bag of ramen noodles.

                                                                                   Chinese Chicken Salad

-serves 6-8

Salad:

8 cups shredded cabbage or coleslaw mix

1 cup canned or cooked diced chicken (you can omit the chicken entirely or add more if you like a meatier salad)

Dressing:

1/2 cup oil

3 TB. vinegar

2 TB. sugar or honey

Dash of salt

1 package chicken flavored Ramen noodles

-Mix oil, sugar and vinegar stirring well to dissolve sugar.  Add packet of chicken flavoring from Ramen nooodle package.

-Drizzle oil over chicken and cabbage mixture and toss all ingredients together.
Refrigerate for at least 2 hour before serving.

Crumble Ramen noodles over top just before serving.

-You can also add roasted peanuts or almonds for an extra crunch!