Spicy Buffalo Chicken Salad

My sister has gotten me hooked on hungry-girl.com website. This website takes resturant recipes and gives them a healthy make-over. Jarrod and I have always loved the Buffalo Chicken Salad from Chili's and we used to eat it all the time when we were dating. Little did we know that that 'little salad' was packed with well over 1,000 calories! No wonder I gained weight! This week I made the hungry-girl's version of this salad and it was AMAZING! We absolutely loved it and it tasted so much like the one from Chili's! This recipe is only enough for 1 person, so double or triple it if you're making it for more people. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Changes I made:

• Added sliced avacado
• After breading the chicken and putting it on the pan, spray it well with cooking spray. This will help it to crisp during cooking and not be dry and dusty. After flipping the chicken halfway through baking, spray again.

Spicy Buffalo Chicken Salad

1/4 cup Fiber One bran cereal (original)
Several Dashes of garlic powder
Several Dashes of onion powder
One 4-oz. raw boneless skinless lean chicken breast cutlet, pounded to 1/3-inch thickness
2 tbsp. fat-free liquid egg substitute (like Egg Beaters Original)
3 cups chopped romaine lettuce
1/4 cup chopped tomato
1 tbsp. crumbled blue cheese
1 tbsp. precooked real crumbled bacon (like the kind by Oscar Mayer)
3 low-fat baked tortilla chips, slightly crushed
1 tbsp. Frank's RedHot Original Cayenne Pepper Sauce
2 tbsp. fat-free ranch dressing


1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray a baking sheet with nonstick spray and set aside.

2. Place cereal in a sealable bag, remove air, and seal. Using a rolling pin or meat mallet, crush cereal through the bag to a breadcrumb-like consistency. Add garlic powder and onion powder. If you like, add salt and pepper. Seal and shake to combine. Set aside.

3. Place chicken in a bowl and top with egg substitute. Coat both sides of the chicken and then give it a shake to remove excess egg substitute. Transfer to the bag with the crumbs, seal, and shake to thoroughly coat both sides with crumbs.

4. Place chicken on the baking sheet and bake in the oven for 10 minutes. Carefully flip chicken and return to the oven for an additional 10 minutes, until crispy and cooked through. Set aside.

5. Meanwhile, place lettuce in a bowl and top with tomato, cheese, bacon, and crushed chips. Set aside.

6. Pour hot sauce onto a small plate. Once cool enough to handle, coat both sides of the cooked chicken with sauce. Slice and place on top of your salad. Serve with ranch dressing and enjoy!

A New Twist on Chicken Fajitas!

Since we've made this new healthy eating 'change,' I have tried coming up with different way to still have some of my favorite things. I love Mexican food, but unfortunately it adds to my waist line pretty drastically. One day I was walking through the grocery store and saw a package of fajita sauce. I had never made fajitas before, but how hard could it be? Since I'm watching my calories very closely I decided I needed to find something to put in the fajitas that would take the place of a lot of the meat. I decided I would sautee mushrooms, onions, squash, and zucchini and then add some of the fajita sauce to it after it was cooked. It was AMAZING! This is my favorite dish and we've been making it once a week for probably 3 months now.

A few tips:
1. Buy 2 packages of dry fajita mix (one for the chicken or beef and one for the vegetables).
2. When slicing the squash and zucchini, try to just skim thin strips off....you don't want a lot of the middle part otherwise it will become mushy and nobody likes a mushy fajita!
3. Sautee the mushrooms by themselves first, remove them, sautee the rest of the vegi's and then add the mushrooms back in when everything is cooked. The reason for this is because mushrooms release juice when they are cooked and if you cook them with the rest of the vegi's everything will just go mushy....trust me).
4. Slice your chicken in short, thin strips. This will help them too cook faster and it'll help you not to pile so much onto your tortilla.
5. Use any kind of tortilla you want. My husband likes to use spinach wraps while I use low-carb wheat wraps to cut calories.....one of his is 210 calories and one of mine is 76 calories....big difference!

Chicken

Cooked onion, mushrooms, squash, and zucchini



The finished fajita!


Chicken Fajitas

1 lb. chicken, cut into short thin slices
2 packages prepared fajita mix
1 small package of sliced mushrooms
1 medium/large onion
3 large zucchini
3 large yellow squash
extra virgin olive oil
tortilla shells
low-fat shredded mozzerella or cheddar cheese

1. Marinate chicken in fajita sauce for atleast 30 minutes before cooking.
2. Slice all vegetables
3. Sautee mushrooms in olive oil until a little crispy then set aside.
4. Cook chicken in skillet over medium high heat until done.
5. Sautee onions, zucchini, and squash in a large skillet until slightly browned (do not use much olive oil....you can always add more if you need it!)
6. Add mushrooms to vegetables and add the rest of the fajita sauce. Cook until most of sauce is absorbed.
7. Load tortilla with a little chicken and a lot of vegi's. Top with some cheese and voila!