Name: BLT Chicken Garden Salad
Prep time: 15 min
Yield: 5 servings
Ingredients: 1 heart green leaf lettuce; 3 roma tomatoes; 5-8 slices pre-cooked bacon; 2 1/2 cups cooked, diced chicken; 1 1/4 cup shredded parmesan cheese; 1/2 cup mayo; 1/4 cup milk; 2 tbsp vinegar; 1/2 tsp salt; 2 tsp sugar

BLT Chicken Garden Salad is a simple, show stopper of a salad! The homemade creamy, tangy dressing pairs well with the saltiness of the Bacon and the sweetness of the Tomato. This Salad is easy to make large for a crowd, or small to keep it personal sized. Say ‘hello’ to your new lunch go-to!

Salad- The Perfect Quick Summer Lunch

I don’t know about you, but during the summertime I feel like I always get into a lunch rut. Yeah, my kids are great with turkey or peanut butter sandwiches day, after day, after day… but I get so tired of it!

But then it gets to be lunch time and I am hungry, I look in the fridge, think about eating another pb&j for approx. 3.6 seconds before giving up and eating leftover cookies. Kidding! … sort of. ?

Lettuce Salad though, that is the perfect summer lunch to me. I rarely want to spend the time making said salad though when I am hungry. I want food and I wanted it 10 minutes ago.

You know I’ve got a solution for this, right? I wouldn’t have brought up the issue if I didn’t. ?

Prepping Salad Ingredient In Advance

My solution is prepping the salad once and being able to eat it for the next few days. I have a few tips for you on how to do this most effectively.

First let’s talk about the lettuce. Yes, you can buy lettuce in the bag, but I find it goes soggy and brown much faster. Plus it is quite a bit more expensive than If you just buy a head of lettuce.

I like to use green leaf lettuce. It looks like Romaine Lettuce, but the ends are leafy and ruffled. This particular lettuce is very crisp and I find it stays fresh for quite a few days if prepped and stored correctly.

I wash each large leaf individually first and pat them dry with a paper towel. I then roughly chop it into bite sized pieces, rinse with water and then spin it in my salad spinner.

Then I divide the lettuce into serving sized portions and store each portion in a ziplock bag. Make sure to push all of the air out of the bag possible. Refrigerate until ready to use.

The tomatoes keep really well diced and in a storage container in the fridge. They will last a few days like that.

I always have cooked, sliced or shredded chicken in my freezer that is individually portioned. (Are you catching a trend here?) So I’ll pull some chicken out and put it in the fridge every day so I have some chicken to use for the next day’s lunch. You can find out everything you need to know about how I prep chicken here!

Bacon will be easy- just buy the pre-cooked microwaveable bacon from Costco. So delicious and easy!

The dressing keeps well in the fridge for 4-5 days, so just whip it up once and your set for the rest of the week!

This dressing is so versatile, it works with almost anything. If I have strawberries that need to be eaten, I toss those on my salad too. The dressing just tastes good with everything!