Trying to Be Healthy/Oriental Chicken & Cabbage Salad

I don't think I'm an unhealthy person. In fact, I'm not. I've always been fairly healthy. But I married a man who is always wanting to "try to be healthier" so I guess that's been on my mind lately. We even bought some pedometers a little while ago to see how much walking we did in  a day. Did you know that to be considered "active" you should be taking 10,000 steps a day? I only met this goal once in the few weeks we were tracking ourselves, and I was tired at the end of that day! Guess I'd better "step it up" huh? :)

Yes, it's clipped to my pajamas. At the end of  this day I only had 7587 steps...and that was pretty good for me!

Going healthy seems to be an emerging theme in the food world. On the Food Network now they always have the one person on the Next Food Network Star or similar competitions who is the "healthy food promoter" contestant. I don't think any of these people have won yet, but someday soon they probably will. Which is good! It certainly wouldn't hurt America to eat healthier and feel healthier.

Summer seems to be the easiest time for healthy living for me. Fresh produce helps out a lot. Good weather and excuses to exercise (going on hikes, picnics, parks, walks, bike rides, swimming, etc) present themselves more often than in the winter. Last night my husband persuaded me to go on a walk. He brought along his frisbee (one of his favorite things) and we passed it back and forth a bit. And it was just a little thing, and we only walked a mile, and we only walked, which isn't very fancy or hard core, but it made me feel the tiniest bit healthier. 

I looked back over my recipes about a month ago to judge how healthy my recipes have been. I'm going to try to do better to put up delicious AND healthy recipes in the future. 

I guess I'll start out kind of cliche and go with a salad. This salad has sugar in it, but other than that it's pretty healthy. Good enough for MY blog at least! I recently made this salad for the closing social my group of school counseling program friends had. It's easy and impressive. When my mom first started making it, everyone would ask her for the recipe and it became a tradition for her to bring it to all the family and church gatherings. I think it's time to bring it back!

I didn't remember to take a picture of my salad, but this is basically how it looks. Good, huh?

Oriental Chicken & Cabbage Salad

2 cups diced or shredded chicken 

4 cups shredded cabbage

1 package Raman Noodles (or 2 if you're feeling crunchy :) )

4 green onions

Optional: 1/2 cup slivered almonds or water chestnuts

Chop everything up and add to a bowl. If you're taking this dish to an event, don't add the dressing until just before you get there. You don't want the Ramon Noodles to get soggy or the cabbage to get wilted from the dressing.

Dressing:

2 T. sesame seeds

1/4 cup vinegar

1/4 cup salad oil

2 T. sugar

1/2 t. salt

Season packet from noodles

Whisk or shake or stir it all together and pour on the salad just before serving. The dressing is my favorite part!

See, it's easy!

Husband's Reaction: He doesn't remember, but I made a simpler version of this salad for him while we were dating. He didn't like it then. I think it was just cabbage, dressing, and noodles, so that's understandable. But when I made it a few weeks ago he told me it was really good. He especially liked the chicken, which is no surprise. . . my husband thinks adding chicken to most dishes is the best thing to do!