Taco Salad with Chicken

As you may or may not remember from previous posts, I am trying to feed my family 1 salad a week as a meal.  This has proved to be a bit difficult, because, as you know by now, my husband is a carnivore.  He needs a meat as the protein for dinner.  I love a good taco salad, but is it really a salad? I mean, it has lettuce and a few veggies, but the way I like it is with ground beef, lots of cheese, sour cream etc.  So I did some research and stumbled upon some recipes made w/ chicken! Ta da! While this is still, by no means, a low calorie salad, I feel much better about serving it as a meal since it's with chicken. 

The inspiration for this came from The Pioneer Woman but I changed up some ingredients to fit my family's likes.

Ingredients:
            for the dressing:

• 3/4 C prepared ranch dressing
• 1/4 C salsa (I used mild, but if you want a kick feel free to go up to medium)
• 3 T finely chopped cilantro

            for the chicken:

• 6-8 boneless chicken tenders or 2 whole boneless chicken breasts
• 2 T taco seasoning
• 1/4 C vegetable or canola oil
• 2 T butter

           for the salad: (we didn't use tomatoes because we don't like them but most people add a few 
                                  chopped tomatoes too, so do as you like)

• 1 bag prewashed and cut lettuce (or chop your own head of lettuce)
• 1/2 C shredded cheddar jack cheese
• 2 scallions, chopped
• 1 can corn, drained
• 2 carrots, sliced thinly
• 1 avocado, diced
• 1/2 C crushed tortilla chips
• optional: 1/2 C chopped cilantro (I skipped this, too much cilantro is not a good thing in my house)

Preparation:

Prepare the dressing by mixing together the ranch and salsa and then stirring in the cilantro. Set aside in the refrigerator.

Season the chicken on both sides with the taco seasoning.
Heat butter and oil in large sauté pan.  Add chicken, cook until no longer pink in the middle, turning once during cooking (about 8-10 minutes total cook time).  Place chicken on cutting board and allow to cool.
Place drained corn in same sauté pan as the chicken was in and just heat until corn is warm.  Set aside.

Assembly:  Spread lettuce on a platter.  Layer with cheese, scallions, corn, carrots, avocado, (if you're using tomato and additional cilantro add here), chicken and chips.  Top with dressing.  Smile!