Chicken Avocado Quinoa Salad

It's Wednesday which is typically about food here.  So, let’s talk about my current food obsession.


It all started back at Liz’s Baby Shower with this

It’s the Strawberry Avocado Quinoa salad from Cheeky Kitchen. The salad is a dish that Brooke made when trying to veganize her chicken avocado salad. I got to thinking one day and decided to sort of combine the two.


Start with quinoa. 
{If you need a great quinoa cooking “recipe”, check here}

Once it is done cooking, set it aside to let it cool really well. 

Now, grab an onion and give it a nice chop 
{Full disclosure: Mathlete prefers it minus the onion but that is because he just doesn’t like onions all that much}.

Throw it in a bowl. Add a can of drained and rinsed black beans to your bowl.  Then, throw some corn in there. I use 2 ears of corn grilled but, you could easily use canned corn. 

Throw your shredded chicken {maybe consider shredding it with your mixer to save time} on top. 

Feel free to use a rotisserie chicken like I did {what?…I was making this on a weeknight with three very busy kids running around}

Let’s make some dressing for this baby! 


Now, I have mentioned my love of online grocery shopping here, on facebook, through a megaphone…you get the picture. Well, this particular trip was a semi-shopping failure. 


Why? 


I accidentally selected key limes versus regular limes. Yep! These little, itty bitty things were definitely meant to be their much large brother. 

So, when making this dressing, use the zest and juice of 4 regular sized limes…or about 20 key limes! Basically, try for about 4-4.5 Tbsp of juice. 


In a blender, put your lime juice, ¾ cup of cilantro and 2 ½ Tbsp of sugar. Blend it up to make a yummy dressing. 


Now, your quinoa is cool so throw that in your bowl. 


Cut up your avocado into small pieces and put it in your dressing bowl. Toss it coat the avocado in the dressing so that lime juice will help keep it from browning. Pour the dressing {and avocado} into the bowl with your other ingredients. Toss to coat. 
Sprinkle with some sea salt and you are done!

Enjoy! 


**Tweaks**
- As I mentioned, Mathlete doesn’t like the onion so you could leave that out. 
- You could also add in the strawberries from the original recipe and make it extra yummy. 


Chicken Avocado Quinoa Salad 


Ingredients: 
1 cup quinoa, cooked and cooled 
½ onion, chopped 
1 (15 oz) can black beans, drained and rinsed 
2 ears of corn, grilled and removed from cob (or 1 small can niblets) 
1 cup shredded chicken 
1 large avocado 
4 limes 
¾ cup fresh cilantro 
2 ½ Tbsp agave (sugar works ok too) 


Directions: 
1) In a large bowl, mix onion, black beans, corn, chicken and quinoa together. 
2) In a blender, combine the lime juice, cilantro and agave to make the dressing. 
3) Cut the avocado in small pieces and toss in dressing. Add avocado to quinoa mixture. 
4) Pour dressing over quinoa mixture and toss to combine. Sprinkle with sea salt.

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