Tasty Recipes from Recipe Wizards

Kathy Huschka loves Chinese chicken salad, but she wanted to lighten up her recipe for it.

"The dressing scares me. Can you slim it down?" she wrote me. "Half a cup of oil sounds like so much."

I started by adding more vinegar to the dressing and reducing the amount of oil. Baking the chicken with some soy sauce and a bit of toasted sesame oil pumps up the salad's flavor so that the dressing doesn't need a lot of oil. I also substituted Splenda for the sugar and cut out the extra teaspoon of salt because the chicken seasoning packet comes loaded with sodium already.

Many Chinese chicken salads include a generous amount of almonds for extra crunch, but I use some shredded carrot instead to cut hundreds of calories and more than 50 fat grams from this recipe.

My alterations to Huschka's dressing cut the calories by 63 percent and the fat by 68 percent.

You can have a serving of my Chinese chicken salad for 314 calories and 11.4 grams of fat.

KATHY'S CHINESE CHICKEN SALAD

For salad:

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breasts

1/2 head Napa cabbage, thinly sliced

1/4 head red cabbage, thinly sliced

1 large carrot, shredded

3 scallions, thinly sliced

1 (11-ounce) can mandarin oranges packed in water, drained

For dressing:

1 packet chicken seasoning from package of ramen noodles

2 tablespoons Splenda

1/2 cup white vinegar

3 tablespoons canola oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine soy sauce with sesame oil and brush onto chicken breasts.

Arrange chicken breasts in a glass dish and bake until juices run clear, about 15 minutes. Remove chicken from oven, cool completely and cut into \-inch slices.

In a large bowl, combine cabbage, carrot, scallions, mandarin oranges and chicken. In a small bowl, whisk together chicken seasoning, Splenda, vinegar and canola oil. Pour dressing over salad and toss to combine. Divide evenly among four bowls.

Serves 4.

Per serving: 314 calories, 750 mg sodium, 11.4 fat grams, 69 mg cholesterol, 30 g protein, 18 carb grams, 3.3 fiber grams

I'LL SLIM IT DOWN FOR YOU

Do you have a favorite food or popular recipe that you'd like to see made healthier? Send your ideas and recipes to me at:

dontsaydiet@gmail.com or

Don't Say Diet

P.O. Box 780865

Wichita, KS 67278

Tags: Almonds, Boneless Chicken Breasts, Chicken Seasoning, Chinese Chicken Salad, Chinese Chicken Salads, Chole, Glass Dish, Head Napa Cabbage, Inch Slices, Mandarin Oranges, Mg Sodium, Oil Pumps, Ramen Noodles, Red Cabbage, Scallions, Seasoning Packet, Shredded Carrot, Tablespoon Soy Sauce, Toasted Sesame Oil, White Vinegar