Dinner salad

If I am going to eat a salad for dinner it has to be huge. 
Like platter turned dinner plate huge.

And with lots of stuff on it.

After I got home from HIIT Wednesday night, I was ravenous.

Ravenous- but I still wanted to stay healthy after that workout.

So I decided tonight was the night for a dinner salad.

And some dessert.

My technique?  

Just start throwing left overs from your fridge 

onto a plate of spinach.  Great way to use the leftovers and create a low maintenance meal.  

Before you say OMG thats a gigantic ham steak for one salad
Please note I made enough for 3 salads.  
Dinner for two and leftovers for lunch.

Start off with a big ol smoked ham steak from the butcher.  

Nom Nom Nom.

Toss them in a pan and let them crisp up in a teeny bit of Olive Oil, S&P. 

Start pulling out other random ingredients.  

Mushrooms and onions sliced and sauteed.  

I threw the ham onion and mushroom concoction on my spinach

 (base of my salad)

 to cool down and wilt the spinach a tad while I prepped the rest of my feast

I snacked on some pickles while I cooked so 

a)  I didnt eat my dinner in the process of making it 

(im such a picker)and 

b) they are so so delicious.

 Unless they are the sweet kind. 

 I get insulted when I bite into a pickle

 and its one of those bread and butter pickles.  

I threw some cauliflower on my salad

because it was in the fridge as leftovers and I wanted to use it up. 

Next I grabbed my left over raviolis 

(2 for each salad... im not that much of a fatty)

 I toasted them up in a pan to give a little big of crunch on my salad. 

I added some quinoa I had kicking around in the fridge 

(I make batches of it and throw it into everything!).

For a dressing I combined balsamic vinegar 

and olive oil with an italian dressing seasoning packet-

 yumm.

It was a yummy dinner salad, about the size of the head (that plate is huge- don't be fooled).  It was super filling, pretty healthy, and satisfying.  

But of course I saved room for dessert.  

A healthy apple crisp.

Basically a baked apple with oats on top. 

 I cut up an apple, and threw a little bit of brown sugar and cinnamon on the apples and tossed them in an oven safe dish.  

For the Crisp I combined oats, a little bit of flour, and lots of cinnamon.  

Thats how I bake.. no real measuring. 

Just a little O' this and a little O' that.

Bake it at 400 until the top starts to get golden brown. 

Maybe even toss them under the broiler.  

And top it with a huge dollop of cool whip

 (the lite version of course)

So you can add twice as much.

Going to try to eat a dinner salad at least once a week, and keep trying out crazy combinations. Like salad and ravioli.  

It paid off this time.

What is your favorite dinner salad?