Low Fat Chicken Apple Salad for Your Holiday Barbecue

Getting enough fruits and vegetables in our diet can be frustrating. A good way to remedy that is by having a variety of salad options at your disposal. Salads are an optimal choice. They provide an excellent way to stay healthy and trim while enjoying your meals. Since there are so many different varieties of salads you can keep your meals exciting and tasty without much effort. They also make an excellent snack from left overs.

Many salads can be the main course, if desired. Chicken and apple salad is one these salads. It's a perfect choice for something different on your dining table. Its versatility allows it to be a choice for lunch, dinner, or a tasty side dish.

Here's the recipe.

6 boneless chicken breasts

6 cups chopped lettuce

5 medium size apples

3/4 cup raisins

1 1/2 cup grapes

1 cup orange juice

1/2 cup toasted coconut

2 tablespoons vanilla flavoring

1 1/2 to 2 cups mayonnaise. You can substitute Low-fat mayonnaise for fewer calories.

In a large frying pan cook chicken breasts after spraying pan with non-stick oil. Let pan heat up. This tastes great grilled! Add orange juice and vanilla flavoring to pan and cover. Cook on medium heat allowing juice and flavoring to seep into chicken until liquid is gone. Turn off heat and allow chicken to cool.

Peel and chop up apples to desired size, after rinsing them. For better taste, cut apples into small cubes.

Rinse and drain grapes and cut each grape in half. You can also cut in thirds if you prefer.

Cut up your chicken breasts. A good way to do this is too cut diagonally all the across each chicken breast and then horizontally.

In medium sized salad bowl, add chicken, apples, grapes, lettuce, and raisins. You can toast the coconut easily by spreading it out thinly on a cookie sheet and putting in oven at 350 degrees for about one minute. Watch closely since every oven is different. You will be able to tell by looking at it, if that is sufficient time by how brown the coconut is. If not brown enough, stick in oven again, but watch it carefully so it doesn't burn. Once cooled, add coconut to your salad mixture.

Add 1 1/2 cups mayonnaise and mix well. If you like a more slippery salad add additional mayonnaise until satisfied with result.

Put covered salad into refrigerator and let cool completely. It will take approximately 3 hours for it to be completely chilled and ready to eat. This serves 6-8 people.

Enjoy!