Cherries, Spectacular Summer Salad, Dinners This Week

Suzanne

June 10

First things first: I use frozen cherries in my cherry smoothies. Listen, I love fresh cherries as much as the next gal, but no way am I pitting cherries every morning to feed my raging smoothie habit. Also, have y'all seen how expensive cherries are?! Right now, they are $8.59 a pound at my local grocery store. Frozen, already-pitted cherries, however, are $7.99 for two pounds. I usually turn to Costco for my cherry needs, though, because you can get a five-pound bag for under $15.

Am I enjoying a luscious cherry smoothie as I write this? Yes, indeed I am.

Okay! It is Monday and we are already speaking of food, so I will go ahead and ask that you please do me a favor and make my favorite honey chipotle summer salad this week. It is my favorite salad of all time. At least, my favorite SUMMER salad of all time (wouldn't want to make my favorite fall salad jealous). When I make it for myself and my husband, I make a double portion so I can feast on leftovers for lunch all week.

So many veggies!!!!

And vegetarians! Please do not look away just because this recipe includes chicken! The chicken is incidental to the spectacularity of the salad. What you need is anything that can be marinated and cooked, so that you can bask in the spicy sweet richness of the sauce, which I use as a second dressing.

This salad is an amalgam of things, so please bear with me. First, I marinate my chicken (or WHATEVER) in the marinade from this recipe. Then I throw it in the oven at 450 until the chicken is cooked and/or the sauce is bubbly and caramelized.

At some point in the preparation process, I make crispy quinoa, black beans, and a dressing. Sometimes I make the chili lime dressing from this recipe, which is simple and slightly sweet. More recently, I am enamored of this cilantro vinaigrette, which is such a fabulous creamy contrast to the chipotle sauce. I also wash copious amounts of lettuce (I store it in my salad spinner in the fridge with a paper towel on top; it keeps for a few days) and prepare other veggies (usually bell peppers, red onion, avocado, corn, and tomatoes for people who like that kind of thing). (I wrap shucked, washed ears of corn in damp towels and microwave them for three minutes. Then I scrape off the kernels into a bowl and put them in the fridge so they cool off before I put them on the salad.) Then I throw everything together and drizzle with some of the caramelized chipotle sauce. It is a rich, garlicky, spicy-sweet addition that I imagine is similar in some ways to chili crisp (which I have never tried), and it takes the salad to a whole other level.

Well, it doesn't look like much. But it is SPECTACULAR.

Now that I have fully salad badgered you, let us turn to dinners.

Hmm. I need some simple and flexible things for this week's meal plan because it is a call week.

Dinners for the Week of June 10-June 17

Some Sort of Chicken and Asparagus: Depending on the weather, we could grill this or roast it in the oven.
Ground Beef Tacos: Easy, plus I have been making the taco meat in the crockpot lately, so it's very hands-off and can be prepped in advance.
Oven Baked Pork Chops with Broccoli: I can prep everything ahead of time and throw the pork chops in the oven when my husband leaves the hospital.
Panang Curry: My husband LOVED this the last time I made it, so maybe I will make it for him on Sunday? (It was highly successful on the stovetop, by the way. I used an entire tin of curry paste and added in about two cups of chicken stock, which wasn't part of the original recipe.)
Chickpea Bowls: It's been awhile since this has been on the docket, and it's always a good option. As usual, I will probably make a chicken breast for my husband to slice into his bowl, and I will add tons of sliced bell peppers to the sauce to amp up the veggie factor.