Salad Dressing Not Just For Salads

It was dinner time and I had no idea what to prepare. Standing with the refrigerator door open with no clue as to what I was going to make for my wife and myself to eat. Something that would meet our varied requirements; you know, green stuff for her and tasty but healthy stuff for me. It is at that moment it occurs to me why women live longer than men do. Now follow me on this. They say that you live longer if you can keep your brain active. For men who sit in front of a TV set watching a ball game they cannot count that as keeping their brains active. However coming up with something to eat that makes everybody happy does. You know finding new ways to fix the same old sh.. stuff, and once you do figure out what to cook you also have to find a way to get it all cooked and delivered to the table at the same time. That is definitely using your brain, right? Isn’t that usually what the woman does? That is why women live longer than men do. Anyway back to the refrigerator and how I went about finding something to fix for dinner. This had to be a “leftover night” because I had lots of leftovers starting with one piece of chicken. I could give her, my lovely wife, that piece of chicken but then what would I eat? She likes salad so I could make her a salad and eat the chicken myself. Now before you yell at me and think I am being selfish let me explain how things work around here. We buy boxes or bags of spring mix salad fixings. I add about the same amount of iceberg lettuce to make it go farther and it also adds more crunch to our salad base. I then chop up carrots, onion, celery, and lots of other items one might find in a salad. These I place in individual containers so that they can be added to our spring mix and lettuce mixture in quantities that suit us. My wife loves this and would eat salad 3 times a day if I would let her. So eating the last piece of chicken would be no big deal to her. But since I am such a nice guy I couldn’t do that to her. Although it is true that at times I do cut up leftover meat, chicken, fish, or shrimp in a bag to put over our salad but with only one piece of chicken I didn’t think it would be enough for two. I also had to take into consideration the cat and dog who would be under my feet bagging for their share too. One piece of chicken can only go so far. Closing the refrigerator I moved over to the pantry and found more leftovers. There was a partial box of vermicelli, a half box of macaroni, and some whole grain spaghetti. Maybe there would be enough pasta for one person but not enough to make a meal for two. Of course there was other stuff in the pantry but I ruled out everything I was not in the mood for, like rice and instant mashed potatoes. Although the pasta did sound good there just wasn’t enough of any one of them. That and pasta without sauce isn’t very good. So I moved on to the freezer for a look see. Sure enough I found just what I thought I would, nothing. Since we have a side by side and I was working up a sweat trying to plan dinner I opened the refrigerator door too and stood there holding both doors open and still no ideas for dinner came to this now cool dude. It was then that I spotted the salad dressing in the refrigerator door and an idea suddenly came to me. Salad dressing doesn’t always have to go on just salads. Let’s face it; salad dressings are used to tie together all the ingredients in a salad making them into one dish. Way not use salad dressing to tie together other ingredients as well. Suddenly I knew what I was going to prepare for dinner. From the freezer I took out the shrimp in a bag and started to thaw 6 pieces each. Next I put on some water to boil so I could cook up the, one plus, serving of vermicelli. I then pulled out the leftover chicken and pulled all the meat off the bone and chopped it into bite size chunks. After that I got out all the salad fixin’s and it was then that I spotted a container of mushrooms and another idea hit me. So I cut the mushrooms into the same size chunks as I had the chicken. Put the chicken and mushrooms into a sauté pan and covered them over medium low heat. Now here is that special part where I use the salad dressing, but not on a salad. I got out a bottle of Ken’s Steak House Lite Creamy Caesar salad dressing. Just as the chicken became juicy and the mushrooms were dark rich golden brown and done to perfection I drizzled a small amount of the Creamy Caesar dressing over the mixture. I used just enough to spice up the favor and add a little something extra to the chicken and mushrooms which I then poured half over Sharon’s spring mix and iceberg lettuce mixture and half over mine. I then put the cooked vermicelli into the same sauté pan that I had used for the chicken and mushrooms. You guessed it, I added another drizzle of the Creamy Caesar to the pasta as well. While this was heating up just a little I put 6 shrimp into a salad bowl for Sharon and 6 in a salad bowl for me. Then I divided the spiced up pasta and poured it over the shrimp. There you have it; Chicken Mushroom Salad with a side of Spicy Garlic Shrimp Pasta. Which I might add tasted delicious. I am sure that preparing this meal added at least 2 extra days to my life span for all the mental work I had to go through to make this fantastic dinner. What do you mean I loose 3 days because I used butter to sauté my chicken and mushrooms? Not fair. I am already a dollar short, now you want me to be a day late too?