A Bacon-licious Salad and a Bonus Salad

Bacon. What else is there to say? Well, a lot actually. Before I begin spewing poetic verses about bacon let me tell you about this amazing salad. The ingredients are simple and you probably have a combination of them on hand. Leave out anything you do not like and add anything you love. For me the MUST-haves are: iceberg, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, black olives, avocado, chicken, BACON, and corn. Scallions are a great addition if you skip the corn.

Chop your lettuce to desired size. I cut it pretty small for this salad. 

Dice bacon in nice, big pieces. 

This is actually the leftover chicken from my crock-pot chicken post. So perfect for this salad! 

Cube your cucumbers. Slices don't work for this salad. 

Mmm...

Cube the avocado the same size as your cucumbers

I always halve my tomatoes. If you are going to use large tomatoes make sure you seed them. 

So here is the secret to what makes this my favorite dinner salad. When I was a kid, my parents made this super delicious side-dish; fried corn. It is seriously addictive...I don't make it very often because I can eat the whole thing myself. My parents recipe is basically a can of drained corn cooked in butter with onion and salt and pepper. I have done a few variations of it. Broiling it is really fast and easy. Spread the corn on a cookie sheet, spray with olive oil and sprinkle with S&P. Broil for 5- 8 minutes depending on how crisp you want it. I have added chili, cumin and lime. You can use cumin, coriander, and paprika. Really, anything you like. One thing I never do now is use canned corn. Frozen is so much better. Thaw it out, dry with paper towels so it gets nice and crispy when you cook it. I use about a pound but you can adjust for your family size. 

For this salad, I chopped half a red onion and cooked it in the bacon grease. Then I added the corn and some S&P. Um...GENIUS. 

Make sure to drain the corn! You don't want your salad swimming in bacon fat...or maybe you do. Go for it. I won't judge you. 

There it is. My beautiful, Bacon-licious Salad. I really want to be able to tell you that I ate this with a healthy yogurt based dressing or something. I can't tell you that. I poured ranch over it. It was delicious. 

The Bonus Salad

I found this yummy sounding dressing the other day and I wanted to make a very simple salad to try it out. One thing you can ALWAYS find in my kitchen is a huge bag of cucumbers. We eat them like crazy, especially in the summer. I try to keep tomatoes on hand as well but Fairy Girl often eats them before I can use them. Cherry tomatoes have been her favorite food since she was 2. Her Papa used to buy containers of them to surprise her with. I can't complain about my kids' eating habits. Onions, who doesn't have those on hand? Purple are the best for salads in my opinion. So, you take these three things and what do you have? A basic, simple salad that goes with just about any dressing. 

I had some bell peppers so I added those. Avocado would have been great! Chickpeas, too! 

The dressing was amazing by the way. I highly recommend it. Otherwise, throw some vinegar over it or lemon juice. S&P and you are good to go. 

What is YOUR favorite salad? 

Don't be fooled by the clouds. We did not get any rain.