Garlic and Lime Barbecue Chicken Salad

Its bathing suit and bikini season rolling around the corner and that means its time to cut back on those carbs and load up on veggies. Summer time definitely is salad time. But how do you make a salad satisfying? What do you use? Which veggies? What type of dressing? The common concern seems to be, 'how will I get my protein?' or 'Will I be full from just a salad?'. My answer to anyone, is that salads are an amazing meal because it's a great way to load up on your veggies, be creative in the kitchen, and also absorb all of the incredible vitamins and nutrients in each ingredient. Remember, water soluble vitamins, mainly your Bs and C, are lost when you cook food. You don't want that now do you? B-vitamins are so important to keep your body at optimal energy levels, help your nervous system, even healthy muscle production and your Vitamin C, well we all know that Cs are linked to health skin, teeth, gums, and of course warding off colds and flus. Ladies, don't both with those collagen creams just bump up your Vitamin C intake (through food) and your body will naturally produce more collagen..meaning...wrinkles be done! Isn't it amazing what food can do for us? Anyway, my point is, eating raw vegetables is just so so soooo good for your gut. Not only on the outside - you will notice that winter-warming belly shrink down, but also great for in the inside - your healthy gut microflora will flourish which not only improves your immunity, but has also been linked to a good state of mind.

So let's get cooking or maybe I should say preparing? I love to BBQ as much as I can. Some grilled chicken ontop a bed of greens with some extra fixings....oh you'll love it! I guarantee it! I found this great recipe for garlic and lime BBQ'd chicken salad and you must try it. Its absolutely delicious and guilt-free. If anything, you're doing your body good having this for dinner!

This salad recipe looks as good as it tastes! It's colorful and that is a good thing, you want to get a variety of fruits and vegetables into your diet everyday, from all the colors of the rainbow. This salad with its fresh green lime wedges, grilled barbecue chicken pieces, fresh green spinach, grilled pineappe rings, and fresh avocado will have your mouth watering.

To get this recipe started you will want to grab a good sized bowl out of the cupboard, so you can whisk together the barbecue sauce, soy sauce, worcestershire sauce, olive oil, stock powder, garlic and lime juice for the chicken. Then add your boneless chicken breasts to the marinade and make sure to coat the chicken pieces evenly. Then in a nonstick grilling pan over medium heat, add some oil and then put your chicken into the pan and sear on both sides. You will want to cover the pan and cook the chicken, making sure to turn ever couple of minutes, until the chicken is browned on both sides and cooked all the way through. Then take the chicken out of the pan and allow it to rest, while keeping warm. You can reserve the rest of the juices and sauce from cooking the chicken into a separate small bowl. Now drizzle a little bit of oil into the same pan, and grill the pineapple rings on both sides until caramelized, which only takes about four minutes on each side.

Did you know that because of the natural sugars that are found in pineapple, it is the perfect fruit for carmelizing and grilling? That nice char effect you get on the fruit is from the cartelizing, which can also be done with peaches, watermelon and onions to name a few.