Recipe: Blue Cheese and Apple Salad

A few of you asked for more recipe ideas in particular vegetarian options.  I am certainly not a gourmet chef nor a food stylist so here is my best effort.  This is what we had for dinner tonight and my version is vegetarian, while my husband eats meat.  I just marinated a chicken breast in salad dressing (I used Wishbone Berry Delight) and put it in the crock pot.  So he had chicken breast as well as the salad.

Then I sliced up Gala and Granny Smith apples.  I did 2 Granny Smith and 1 Gala and that was more than enough for 2 adults and a toddler.  I sprinkled blue cheese on the top- an entire package or about 4-5oz.   I also added a little salt and pepper.  I baked at 425 for about 5 minutes until the cheese was melted.

This recipe was from the November issue of Southern Living at Home and the recipe also called for chopped pecans which I did not have on hand.  I skipped those and put the salad on a bed of greens to make it a little more hearty and served with focaccia.

It was a little rich but turned out to be pretty good.  I think a little lemon juice would have made it even better.  Next time I will drizzle the apples with lemon juice before I cook them.  Now my little one had some chicken breast with plain sliced apples and a little lettuce.   The entire process was less than 30 minutes (not including the time in the crock pot for the chicken) so this is for sure a quick meal.

As for the breakdown in price- this is just a guesstimate:

Lettuce (huge tub was $1.99) so $.50 or so
Blue Cheese $2.99
Apples $1
Focaccia ($1.99 at Whole Foods) so .50
Chicken Breast (purchased at $1.24/lb) $1.00
Salad Dressing Free with coupons

So roughly $6.00 for dinner tonight which isn’t bad at all.