The upside of those recipe swap chain emails: Asian Chicken Salad

You know those (really annoying) emails you get from friends asking you to forward an email on to 20 of your friends asking them to participate in a "recipe swap" and then send a recipe to the top person on the email... well, I always do them because some part of me feels guilty that I have this awesome cache of recipes. Either that or I am afraid that I didn't read down to the bottom where it says "if you don't do this you'll have bad luck for a year", or something to that effect. Anyway, this last go round I actually ended up with some new ideas for quick meals from people I had never heard of. And (drum roll) I finally got my hands on Daneille's mom's Asian Chicken Salad recipe. I had only been badgering her for this recipe for what would you say Daneille, about a year? Ironically, another local friend sent me her version of this salad. Tonight I combined the two recipes for a salad my kids proclaimed "the best salad ever". Thanks to you both, this one is a keeper.

Asian Spinach Salad with Chicken

(makes 6-8 servings)

Dressing:

12 tablespoons olive oil

5 tablespoons turbinado sugar (or regular sugar)

3 tablespoons rice vinegar

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

3 tablespoons soy sauce

1/2 seasoning packet from 1 Dr. McDougall's Soy Ginger Noodle bowl

In a blender, combine all of the above. If necessary, add more olive oil or more vinegar to reach desired taste.

Salad:

2 containers Dr. McDougall's Soy Ginger Noodle Bowl, dry noodles only, coarsely broken

2 bunches green onions, chopped

1 small head of cabbage, chopped

spinach, coarsely torn

1 rotisserie chicken, meat removed and shredded

1 cup slivered almonds, toasted (if they aren't already roasted)

Combine all in a large bowl. Toss with dressing right before serving. If your children are eating earlier than you, simply toss the salad ingredients first and just add dressing to individual bowls.

Here it is in pictures for those that like to see it in action:

Contents of 2 Dr. McDougall noodle bowls, noodles and dried scallions only. (Even though these bowls are Whole Food's "healthier" answer to ramen, they're still really high in sodium (590 grams if you used a whole packet). So,I took the separately packaged flavor packets out, using 1/2 of one of them in the dressing and keeping the other for some other use down the road.)

Scallions next...

Then cabbage...

A big bag of baby spinach...

And one rotisserie chicken, shredded...

Finally a cup of almonds that I carefully toasted on a cookie sheet under the broiler for a few minutes.

Since my children eat at 4:30 (yes, you read that right... you'd have to if you went to bed at 6:30!) I simply tossed the salad ingredients then individually dressed their bowls of salad. When my husband gets home I'll add the remaining dressing to the big bowl for our dinner.

My boys claimed this was "the best salad EVER!". So, it's a keeper around here.