“Leftover” Southwest Chicken Salad

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This past weekend I hosted a practice run for our Super Bowl party.  We had a small group of family over and I wanted to put on a fun spread of foods and party decor.  I also really needed to use up some of the leftover in my fridge from the week (you know so I could whip up some fun new recipes) and I figured that there had to be something I could make!  I know that I’ve talked a little bit about my switch to glass over the past few months (here) and I am starting to switch over all my food storage containers to glass now as well.  There is something really reassuring about knowing that no matter how many times I throw them in the microwave/dishwasher/oven they will never leach chemicals, stain or otherwise get “weirdy”.  I was really excited to see that our local Target had a HUGE selection of the glass Rubbermaid storage containers when I was there and so I made sure to grab a box.

I already have about 30 of the Rubbermaid plastic storage containers and I LOVE them.  The containers are all the same size on top (so the lids are interchangeable) and even better they lock together so you no longer end up with a crazy cupboard full of lids and containers hanging out all willy nilly.  Oh and I have good news for you, if you text “COUPONS” to TARGET on your cell phone you can score a $1 off Rubbermaid food storage coupon and a $1 off Sharpie 4 pack or larger through February 8th!

I pulled the leftovers out of my fridge and got to thinking about what I could make. One of the downsides to eating “football” foods every weekend is that you can start to feel a little gross after that much fried/cheesy/rich food so I knew that I wanted to lighten things up a bit.  I decided that a yummy salad was just what we needed to start feeling better about our traditional football foods so I grabbed some lettuce and got to work.  I started by chopping up all the lettuce and put it in a (glass) bowl. 🙂  Then I laid the toppings out in rows on top of that, because I think it’s as important for the food to look good as taste good!  I used some leftover shredded chicken, black beans, Mexican rice, corn, black olives and some crumbled cornbread.  I decided to whip up a dressing using leftover enchilada sauce mixed with some ranch dressing.  I drizzled the dressing over top of the salad and let people dig in!

I also made some slider burgers to go alongside the salad.  I mixed a pound of ground beef, 1/4 cup of diced onion and 1/2 a container of blue cheese crumbles together and shaped them into little burgers.  While those were cooking I sliced some sourdough dinner rolls I picked up at the grocery store and toasted them in the oven under the broiler.  I spread some BBQ sauce on the bottom of the bun and a little sweet onion dip (recipe coming soon) on the top.  I placed the burger in and then stuck some of these fun food picks in the top. You know, because it is a football party after all!  I have to tell you, they were some of the juiciest and most flavorful burgers I’ve made in a LOOOOONG time.  So good that my hubby requested I make them again, soon!

The last step in my Super Bowl prep was to make some fun drink tags.  I hate when you have a bunch of people over and you set your drink down only to forget which one is yours.  These cute little tags make it easy to customize your drink in style!  Simply download the file here, print and leave them out with a fine tip Sharpie!  I punched a hole in mine and used some fun Seahawks colored twine to make them transferable (in case you want more than one drink)!