Recipe #1 Asian salad with chicken and rice crackers

I had a narrow miss today: I almost went through a McDonalds drive thru. I know, I know. Thing is- I wasn't craving a burger or even their fries. I wanted to try their mango-pineapple fruit smoothie. Dang those billboard ads. But thankfully, I was at Trader Joes for some veggies and got onto another track for lunch. The girls were at Princess Day Camp (I KNOW, right??) and I was going to treat myself to SOMETHING for lunch, one way or another. Trader Joes has killer cartons of chocolate milk for 69 cents (more on chocolate milk another day). So I grabbed a salad from their deli section and a milk along with my veggies and headed for the checkout. At checkout they had bags of Oriental Rice Crackers. Perfect to add crunch to my salad! My girlfriend has lost a lot of weight with the aide of eating a great big salad every day for lunch. She usually crumbles some multi-grain crackers or chips on top for CRUNCH. I think adding crunch to food ups it's appeal and satisfaction factor by about 100%. She agrees. So I snagged some Oriental Rice Crackers and started thinking of the possibilities while trying to ignore the fact that I had selected THE slowest check out line. How about an Asian salad with chicken and these rice crackers on top? You could make a version with romaine or just a straight cabbage slaw marinated in Asian dressing, topped with chicken strips and these crackers. Either way, much better than those brown noodle things or dry Ramen noodles. These crackers have a spicy kick to them as well. I even had high hopes for this being a gluten-free dish, but alas, the rice crackers have soy sauce on them - thus wheat. You could probably find a rice cracker without any gluten though they may not have the same Asian kick as these little babies.
~Here's to Healthy Eating

Asian salad with Chicken and Rice Crackers (serves 2-3)
1/2 to 1 head of romaine lettuce, chopped (depending on size of head)
1/4 head of red cabbage, shredded
1 red pepper, diced
4 green onions, thinly sliced
1 chicken breast cooked and cut into strips
Asian dressing of choice (or recipe see below)
Optional additional toppings:
Bok choy
Water Chestnuts
Cucumber
Snow peas
Mandarin oranges
Sliced almonds
Cilantro

Dressing:
1 Tb brown sugar
2 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
3 Tb olive oil
3 Tb rice vinegar

Suggest tossing all salad ingredients with dressing 10 minutes before serving and topping with lightly crushed Oriental flavored rice crackers just before serving.