If you’re looking for a good, new lunch salad to make… you might want to consider this one.  It’s a spinach salad (changing things up a bit from ho-hum mixed greens).  Here’s how you make it: The first thing you’ll do is cook the chicken.  It’s chicken breast simply seasoned with salt and pepper and then broiled in the oven.  Alternately, you can pan fry it in a nonstick pan sprayed lightly with nonstick cooking spray.  That’s the most difficult part of this recipe!   Grab a bowl and combine fresh spinach with chopped apple, bell pepper, red onion and celery.  Then you’ll toss the salad with the dressing.  Sprinkle shredded Gouda cheese and toasted almonds on individual servings,

I like the Maple Grove Farms brand of Fat Free Honey Mustard Salad Dressing the best. The Marzetti brand is pretty good too. If you want to make it homemade, here is a Fat-Free Honey Mustard Salad Dressing recipe that uses nonfat Greek Yogurt as the base of the dressing. The Skinny Girl Honey Dijon Fat Free Sugar Free Dressing is probably your best bet if you’re following a strict, low-calorie diet. It only has 10 calories for two tablespoons… so for this recipe you’d only be adding 60 calories to the salad using the Skinny Girl dressing instead of a more classic fat-free dressing (which is more like 250).

This Chicken, Apple and Smoked Gouda Salad is quite a nice salad to make for lunch.  And it would be even better to serve for dinner alongside a cup of your favorite soup recipe.  I recommend my Tuscan White Bean Soup with Prosciutto.  That pairing would be perfect.  I’d add some white wine too!

Here are a few more recipes that will help you use up the rest of the Gouda cheese that you bought for this recipe:

Bacon Bit Burgers with Gouda and Smothered Onions Gouda- Stuffed Chicken with Apple Pan Sauce Pork Chops Stuffed with Smoked Gouda Apple and Gouda Grilled Cheese Barbecue Chicken and Bacon Pizza Spinach Macaroni and Cheese Hot Gouda Shrimp Dip English Sausage Pastries