It’s Monday! You know what that means – we need a quick recipe! I went on the hunt for some kind of salad. We are not typical salad eaters unless it is a side with dinner (which we actually do almost every night). We are big fans of a good spring mix – Costco actually has a massive organic one for $4.99! To mix it up, I started looking for a quick salad! There were lots of great ones to choose from but most of them involved an aspect of cooking, which I just did not have time for tonight.
I came upon this Lemon Arugula Salad, which being completely honest, are two things that are not typically my favorite. But the two things that caught my eye were the beautiful image and the golden words underneath the image “Ready in 4 minutes”. I was sold.
Because this weekend was so insane and there was not even time to go grocery shopping, I popped into Trader Joes on my way home from work on a mission to grab stuff for dinner for tonight and tomorrow. I arrived to find the line wrapped around the building – which if you live in the city or any city, you know that’s not atypical for Trader Joes. With Covid though, it’s even longer than usual! Once I got inside I ran around like a crazy person trying to get all of the ingredients I needed for the next two nights without my post-it list. I am so much better with a hand-written well organized list than a screen list.
Anyways here is how EASY this 4 minute 8 minute dinner was to make:
Her recipe called for just FIVE (or Seven) ingredients:
- Arugala
- Lemon
- Olive Oil
- Black Pepper
- Parmesan Cheese
- Chicken/Shrimp/any other protein (optional)
- Cherry Tomatoes (a total wildcard here that I just added in)
I decided it would be fun to add in some pre-made Lemon Chicken from Trader Joes. If you are not shopping their pre-made dinner section, you are truly missing out. I have only picked up their Balsamic Chicken before (it sits right next to the Lemon Chicken) but when I saw this recipe, I knew exactly what I was going to buy! There were some extra cherry tomatoes in the fridge from last week’s Pesto Tortellini that I threw in as well for a little extra flavor.
This one was SO EASY! I put the chicken in a frying pan to warm up. I threw the arugula in a bowl, cut up some cherry tomatoes and tossed in along with a freshly squeezed lemon – a maybe a few seeds, whoops! After a few minutes of leaving the chicken on the stove I cut it up into chunks and added it to the bowl. Topped with thee rest of the juice from the pan, a little olive oil, and lots of grated parmesan (her picture looked nice with the big chunks of cheese but I am sure it tastes the same no matter how you grate it).
Overall Rating: Ben’s first reaction: “I don’t usually like arugula – it’s not bad”.
We both thought it would make a great side salad! It was light and fresh but felt like maybe we needed a little more. After letting my stomach chill for a couple of hours, I think I am content with it being dinner, Ben still thinks it was a nice side dish to everything he snacked on post dinner.
Link to Original Recipe: https://www.gimmesomeoven.com/arugula-salad-with-parmesan-lemon-and-olive-oil/
xoxo
Krysta
