Cooking Corner: Cool taco salad for hot days

Helen Taylor Smith

Cooking Corner

Keeping cool during our hot summer weather — as well as keeping out of a hot kitchen — is absolutely necessary. But continuing to eat healthy during this hot summer is vitally important, too.

The best way to do that is by eating a variety of salads which serve as a main meal. Buy fresh produce, remove it from wet plastic bags, wrap it in paper towels to absorb excess water, re-wrap it in dry paper towels and place it in clean, dry plastic bags. Seal it with a twist tie and refrigerate.

This method will keep your produce fresher longer.

Do not wash produce until the day it is to be used. Do all the prep work in the morning while the temperature is still cool. Then all you need is to toss it all together and serve.

A time- and cooking-saver is to buy a rotisserie chicken to use.

Buy canned organic pinto and black beans and shredded cheese as well as fresh salsa, natural sour cream and baked chips. Check out the natural food section at Fred Meyer for those items.

For more main meal salad recipes, e-mail me at thecook@thehealthycook.com, and I will send you copies. Some recipes have already been printed; others have not.

Salads are a great way to get your daily quota of vegetables and stay cool at meal time.

Ingredients

6 cups romaine leaves; wash, pat dry and cut into thin strips

4 cups rotisserie or grilled chicken breast meat, cut into strips

3 cans of pinto and/or black beans, drained and rinsed

3 cups shredded cheese

2 cups fresh salsa

2 cups natural sour cream (see “tip” below)

2 avocados peeled, cored and sliced

6 cups baked corn chips

Technique

Wash, pat dry and cut the romaine leaves into thin strips. Wrap them in paper towels, place them in a plastic bag, store in the refrigerator and chill until they’re ready to serve.

Cut the cooked chicken breast meat into thin strips and store them in a Ziploc-style bag and refrigerate.

Drain the canned beans and rinse thoroughly to remove any excess salt, then store in a covered container in the refrigerator.

Grate or buy shredded cheese, such as cheddar and/or jack cheese. Have fresh salsa and natural sour cream purchased and in your refrigerator.

Wash two ripe avocados, but don’t peel them until you’re ready to slice them at serving time. Have the corn chips ready.

To serve, divide the shredded romaine evenly on four dinner plates, covering the bottoms of the plates. Place the chips around the romaine, encircling each plate edge with the pointed end of the chips toward the greens.

Sprinkle 1 cup of beans over the greens on each plate, and add 1 cup of the cooked chicken meat on top.

On each plate, sprinkle shredded cheese over the meat and add one-half cup of salsa spread over the top.

Serve dollops of sour cream on top with the slices of avocado. Muy bueno!

Yield — Four servings.

Tip — To reduce the fat content, instead of sour cream, purchase a pint carton of “Nancy’s” low-fat cottage cheese and process it until it’s very smooth, like sour cream. Check the refrigerated case in the natural foods section at Fred Meyer.

Cooking Corner columnist Helen Taylor Smith can be reached by e-mail at thecook@thehealthycook.com. This recipe is supplemental to and property of “Cooking Healthier with the Healthy Cook.” Permission is granted for personal use only. No commercial use permitted without explicit written contract with the author.