January 4: The full-meal salad

I buy a lot of spinach, and I almost never cook it. It is more filling than most greens, making it a good choice for a dinner salad. I also have a penchant for barbecue deli chickens, so they often make their way into my salads. One of the nicest things about a salad like this is that you really can't make too much, since the leftovers can become a lovely hot dish the next day. Even after a couple of days in the fridge, when the spinach is looking all sad and wilted, you can just pop it into the microwave for a few minutes, and it's a whole new meal.

Recipe:
Toss together fresh baby spinach, sliced mushrooms and carrots, cooked chicken breast (hot or cold), cut in bite-size pieces, with a creamy Italian dressing. Sprinkle with freshly toasted slivered almonds.

Dressing: I use Olive Oil mayonnaise with a little Italian dressing whipped in. You can fiddle with the proportions to get the consistency and taste you prefer.

Best tip for toasting nuts
I always buy raw nuts and toast them in the oven (So-called "roasted" nuts are actually deep-fried). But it's way too easy to burn them. I discovered this tip purely by accident and it's saved my nuts many times!
spread nuts on an oven-proof dish or pan, one layer only. Place in a cold oven and preheat to 385 Fahrenheit. As soon as the oven reaches 385, remove the nuts.
The down side is, this only works if you have a newer, electronic oven that tells you when it's hot. (Which I don't, at the moment-- witness the over-toasted almonds in this salad.) You might have to adjust the temperature for your oven, because they are not all quite the same. Pecans can take more toasting than most nuts, so I usually set my oven to 400 for them.