Chicken Salad

Delicious End-of-Summer Buffalo Chicken Salad That is Also Good Other Times of the Year:

Serves two people who eat like they are eight people.

Things that go in it:

• Salad mix greens
• Heirloom tomatoes that are on sale or any kind of tomatoes you like
• Cucumber, partially peeled
• Red or yellow bell peppers that are on sale. Green peppers work, too, but red and yellow are sweeter which go nicely with the spicy chicken 
• Chicken strips from the grocery store deli counter. If your deli counter sucks, you can get frozen boneless buffalo chicken Anytizers, or chicken strips from Wendy's. My mom likes to use Chili's boneless buffalo wings. If your grocery store is Safeway, go for the spicy chicken strips.
• Artichoke hearts in a can (whichever brand is cheapest)
• Crumbled blue cheese or feta
• Croutons (duh)
• Bacon bits (double duh) (The real bacon kind, not bacos, please)
• Diced avocado (also on sale. Because it's the end of summer!)
• Fresh mushrooms

Make it:

1. Slice up the chicken strips. Put them in a bowl and toss with Louisiana Hot Sauce to coat. Put it in the fridge while you make the rest of the salad. Louisiana Hot Sauce is my favorite hot sauce, but it also just works best for this recipe. Frank's is too thick, and Tabasco is too thin. But I'm not your mama so use whatever you have handy.
2. Grab your second biggest mixing bowl. Put in the salad greens. Dice and slice up all the other veggies and throw those in. Note: Use only HALF the can of artichoke hearts because they have a bunch of sodium, this salad has plenty already. Stick the second half of the hearts in the back of the fridge to snack on later with melted butter and lemon juice and garlic (heat up together in microwave).
3. Get the now-spicy chicken out of the fridge and put that on next. Leave it separate if you have picky eaters. Also top with the cheese and croutons and bacon.
4. Toss that salad! Refrain from making it your cheeky status update. (How tacky.) (Hee hee.)
5. Serve it on plates. This year I was watching a competitive cooking show (like I do) and one of the judges chewed out (ha) a contestant for serving salad in bowls instead of plates. I forget the whole tirade, but basically he was saying that salads need room for ingredients to mix properly and the colors to be seen. And you know what? He's right. I started tossing my salads (hee) in a separate bowl and then serving them on plates and it just feels...right-er. For me.
6. Add your favorite creamy dressing. Blue cheese goes great with the chicken. I love Ceasar.
7. Eat that!

I freaking love salads.