12W12S11: Salad of the Week - Chicken BLT

I'm not much of a salad person, but I really want to not have to buy Spanx for the wedding, so I've decided to try an experiment and have salads four days a week. I'm also interested in seeing if having fewer carbs at lunchtime does anything for me -- I am not really a low-carb kind of person (give me pasta or give me death!) but I'm not exactly cutting carbs out completely, either. Breakfasts and dinners will be the same, and on Fridays and the weekends I'll keep doing what I've been doing.

Because I don't want to spend a lot of time dithering around getting stuff together in the morning, I'll be eating the same salad every day, with a different "featured" salad each week. This way, I can make up a couple of sets of ingredients in advance and just grab 'em and go in the mornings. Today I started with my own version of one of my very favorite fast-food salads -- the Wendy's chicken BLT salad, which you can't even get any more. Here is what is going into this week's version:

• ¼ head iceberg lettuce (head cut into wedges, to make it easier to transport and store)
• ⅔ cup diced cooked chicken (from the lunch meat section)
• 1 tablespoon Hormel real bacon bits
• 2 tablespoons reduced-fat shredded cheddar cheese
• ½ cup cherry tomatoes
• ¼ cucumber, diced
• 1 serving croutons (~30 calories or so)
• 1 tablespoon McCormick Salad Toppins
• 1½ tablespoons light ranch dressing

I am weird about crunchy stuff staying crunchy, and keeping my meats and veggies separate until I actually eat my salad, so I put everything into separate containers: lettuce in a ziploc bag; chicken, bacon bits and cheese in one container; tomatoes and cucumbers in another; croutons and crunchies in yet another; and I brought the whole bottle of dressing and keep it in the work fridge. This makes a really big salad, probably about 4 cups worth total, and I figure I got at least 2 full servings of veggies out of it (and probably 3, because it was at least 2 cups of lettuce). You could use whatever kind of dressing you like -- the light ranch I went with has 60 calories per 1½ tablespoons. I've gotten the Wendy's salad with light honey mustard and that was also very tasty. I've gotten used to not using a lot of dressing so this was perfectly fine, although if you like more you can always use more dressing or thin the ranch out a bit with a teaspoon of skim milk if you wanted to.

Next week I'm pretty sure we're going to have some hard-boiled eggs around, what with Sunday being Easter and all, so I think I'm going to do a version of a Cobb salad, with chicken, bacon, eggs, tomatoes, and blue cheese crumbles. Not sure of the dressing yet -- hell, I'm not even sure I'm going to actually stick to this that long, but I'm going to try to, in the interest of science -- but I think I'll go with a light red wine vinaigrette, because it's easy and usually delicious.

(Yes, I know this is deathly boring. Sorry. But I use this space to keep myself honest and to try to psych myself up when I am getting down. Ignore me, just like usual.)