Bringing Vacation Home

I haven’t blogged in a few days because we went up to Lancaster, PA to visit with some family and have a short mini-vacation. Vacations are always fun, but, especially when it’s such a short vacation, it’s sometimes hard to get back home and go back to the daily grind. So I decided to bring some of my vacation home with me.

 

I found this super-delicious-smelling candle, handmade in Bird-in-Hand, PA: a little piece of vacation that I could bring back home with me. The fragrance is “Butterscotch Delight”, and wow, is it a delight! I love the taste AND the smell of Butterscotch… mmmmmm. This candle smells good enough to eat, but I have so far managed to restrain myself!What, you ask, does that have to do with food that is quick & easy, cheap & healthy? Nothing! That’s the next thing I decided to bring home with me was some yummy food I ate while on vacation. Of course, I couldn’t actually bring back the food itself, since it would have gotten quite yucky waiting to be put in my fridge (ew!) so I just brought back the ideaof the food I enjoyed so I could recreate it at home.The first dish I enjoyed was the Fuji Apple Chicken Salad at Panera. Why, you say, there’s nothing special about apple in a chicken salad. People do it all the time! Why, yes, I say, but there’s something different about this apple: it’s dried! Not your leathery, smushy kind of dried, but more like an apple chip dried. The combination of the sweet crunchy apple blended so perfectly with the other flavors in the salad, that it was (like my candle above) super delicious!

And I thought to myself, “This definitely qualifies for quick & easy, cheap & healthy status!” Unfortunately, the only dried apples I had on hand at home were the leathery, smushy variety which simply would not do for my purposes. So I set out to make myself some apple chips.

 

First, I cored an apple and sliced off the ends. I could have peeled it as well, but I opted to leave the peel on for color. Besides, the peel was left on in the Panera salad, and since I was attempting to recreate my vacation, I had to follow it as closely as possible.

Then I sliced the apple into thin, even slices (unfortunately, some of them I sliced a little TOO thin) and soaked them in lemon water for a few minutes, to limit browning. This step is not necessary unless you want them to be as white as possible.

Then I lined a baking sheet with wax paper, greased the wax paper and laid the apple slices out in a single layer, with plenty of room between slices. I put this in my oven, on the lowest setting possible (which happens to be 200 on my cheap-o apartment oven) for about 45 minutes. It would have been better to use a lower setting for a longer period of time, but alas and alack, that was not possible for me!

And here are the apple chips, ready to be put into my Apple Chicken Salad.

Doing it this way is definitely not QUICK. But I thought to myself, “At least it’s cheaper than buying apple chips at the grocery store.” WRONG! That very evening, I saw a bag of apple chips for $1.00 on sale!!! So next time, I’m just going to use store-bought apple chips.

If you buy apple chips, it’s EASY as pie. Salads are always easy to throw together; you don’t have to worry about perfect flavor combinations, and you can be creative with whatever ingredients you have on hand.

It’s CHEAP, especially if you can buy the apple chips on sale (or make them yourself). Salads are a great inexpensive option, even with meat, because often you use less meat on a salad then you would use as an entree in and of itself.

It’s certainly HEALTHY. Any salad is healthy, as long as you stick to fresh lettuces (even iceberg isn’t UN-healthy, it’s just not as healthy as other options), fresh or dried fruits and veggies, healthy proteins (nuts, seeds, chicken, tuna, boiled egg, etc.), and keep the fats minimal. I like to add cheese to my salad (although not right now, b/c of my son’s allergies), because I think it’s a good fat when kept in proportion. And a salad dressing made of oil and vinegar or lemon is not only delicious, but super healthy, too!

This is how I assembled my own Apple Chicken Salad:

Romaine lettuce as a base
Leftover chicken breast, cubed
Roasted almonds, chopped
Apple chips
Dried cranberries

I made a vinaigrette with balsamic vinegar, apple cider vinegar, olive oil, freshly ground black pepper, and a dash of salt. It was good, but not as good as Panera’s, which was made with white balsamic vinegar (I only had reg. balsamic).

Panera’s version of the salad also had onions and tomatoes (my tomatoes aren’t ripe yet and I didn’t have any from the grocery store), onions, gorgonzola cheese, and walnuts instead of almonds.

A quick & easy, cheap & healthy, not to mention super delicious, way to bring some vacation home with me!