Another Easy Side - Salad

Another easy and quick side is a salad. I make mine with only a few ingredients because I don't want to buy a lot that will go bad, and I don't want to have salad for a week straight.

My favorite easy combo is lettuce (any kind you like,) cucumbers, dried cranberries, pine nuts, and light cucumber ranch dressing. The cranberries and pine nuts have a long shelf life and don't need to be refrigerated. I was surprised to find when looking at the nutritional information on some salad dressings, that the light cucumber ranch was lower in calories than all of the light balsamic vinegar dressings I saw. Shows that foods aren't always what you think and you need to read labels!

Since this salad requires a little bit of prep work (cutting the cucumber and pulling the lettuce,) I tend to make it with very basic entrees, like a marinated chicken breast.