Fiesta Salad

So along with nice weather means lots of ice cream! So instead of cutting out my ice cream consumption I decided that eating salads for dinner would allow me to eat more ice cream. The other night we bought a bunch of chicken and put it on the grill for salads for the week. Which makes life so much easier when you want to assemble dinner quickly.

We had some leftover corn from dinner the night before which inspired my fiesta salad! This is one of my favorite salads and basically I just grab whatever ingredients that I have around the house that sound good to me. 

Sample ingredients can include: grilled chicken, grilled steak, shrimp, avocado, jalapeños, jicama, peppers, pepper jack cheese, mango, black beans, corn, cilantro, red onion, etc! 

Now you can always make a creamy BBQ Ranch dressing, but since I am trying to cut down on calories (to eat more ice cream) I adapted a recipe from SkinnyTaste that I found on Pinterest. 

The recipe is for a bean salad, but since we were making this a meal I made it into a salad. 

Dressing Ingredients: 

• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 tbsp fresh lime juice
• 1/4 extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tsp cumin
• pinch crushed red pepper flakes
• 1/4 tsp salt
• fresh ground pepper to taste

Salad Ingredients: 

• Lettuce
• Tomato
• Red onion
• Grilled chicken
• Corn
• Black Beans
• Cilantro
• Red Pepper
• Pickled jalapeños
• Shredded cheddar cheese (or pepper jack if you have it)
• Whatever else sounds good to you (avocado, mango, etc)! 

Toss the salad with the dressing and you have a super simple dinner! You can also add fresh jalapeños if you like more hotness! I served this with black bean mango salsa and of course a fun cocktail! 

Happy Pinning!
By Jennifer Shelton