Strawberry Chicken Salad

It's official: I'm obsessed with this salad. The flavor and texture combo is so pleasing to me. I am about to eat it for dinner for the third night in a row (this is what happens when your husband has a variety of work meetings and late shifts in a week), and I'm not even sad about it. Now, while it IS a main dish salad that includes chicken, it would make a lovely side salad without the chicken--the dressing is that good, people. Even if you think you don't like goat cheese, give it a try--it is magic with strawberries. This is the perfect Spring meal, my friends. Have your besties over for lunch and wow them with this one. 

Strawberry Chicken Salad with Strawberry Balsamic Vinaigrette and Goat Cheese
-slightly adapted from the recipecritic.com


For the salad:

• 2 cups cooked chicken, chopped (I marinated mine in some bottled balsamic dressing for a few minutes, then roasted. Feel free to use rotisserie or grill it or whatever)
• 4 cups romaine, chopped (I used Spring greens mix instead. Baby spinach would also be great)
• 2 cups strawberries, chopped
• ½ cup dried cranberries (I used dried cherries. Just because I far prefer them to dried cranberries. If you've had the dried Trader Joe's Montmorency Cherries you understand this)
• ¼ cup thinly sliced red onion
• ¼ cup crumbled goat cheese (I actually like the log of goat cheese better than crumbles. It ends up coating the salad in loveliness, which I prefer to getting huge bites of it from the crumbles)
• ¼ cup sliced almonds (OK, I did toast mine...just because, but you don't have to

For the strawberry balsamic dressing: Food process or blend--

• 1 cup strawberries
• ¼ cup balsamic vinegar
• ¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• ¼ tsp salt
• ¼ tsp pepper

If you toss all salad ingredients together and dress to taste (won't use all of it), you'll get about 4 salads. I never make salads this way, however. I tend to try and prep my dressing and all other ingredients early in the day and put them in small dishes in the fridge. Then I build each salad individually. This makes sure you get an even amount of ingredients and also allows each person to leave out parts they might not like.  This is especially helpful with picky kids. And most importantly to me--it makes building leftover salads super duper easy.