Strawberry Poppyseed Salad (Panera Copycat)

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I have a delicious summer salad recipe to share with you today. It’s a easy strawberry poppyseed salad with a homemade dressing. This is a copy cat version of a salad from Panera. I have never had the Panera version, but I loved this salad.

There is cooked chicken in this salad. I just used rotisserie chicken that I get from Costco. However, there are Tyson Grilled and Ready chicken breast strips that are also a great option. Or you can grill your own chicken or this is a perfect way to use up leftover grilled chicken. However, you want your cooked chicken for this salad is completely up to you.

Next, this salad includes a lot of fruit. There is fresh blueberries and strawberries in this salad. There is also canned pineapple and mandarin oranges in this salad too. Now, I am doing Weight Watchers so for me it was important to get fruit that was canned in juice and not heavy syrup. You end up with added sugar in your fruit with those canned in heavy syrup.

The base of this salad is just good old romaine lettuce.

However, feel free to change that up if you want. I try to avoid ice berg lettuce when possible. It is the lettuce with the least amount of nutrients. Iceberg lettuce contains 7% of the daily value of vitamin A. It also contains small amounts of vitamin C and iron. It contains fewer vitamins and minerals than other lettuce varieties.

Now on the other hand, romaine lettuce contains 82% of the daily value of vitamin A. It also contains small amounts of vitamin C, iron, and calcium. This is why I tend to choose romaine for my salads. However, an mixed green is also a great option. So use what you like.

The last part of the salad that is completely optional is chopped toasted pecans. I did include these because I love nuts in salad. Sugared pecans would be even better, but again, I’m doing weight watchers and watching my sugar intake. So the toasted pecans is a mush healthier option.

Last is the simple homemade dressing.

It is a simple combination of light mayonnaise, skim milk, sugar or sweetener, apple cider vinegar, and poppyseeds. If you have no worries about sugar then you can use regular sugar. I used Lakanto Classic monk fruit sweetener. It is zero calorie and contains natural sugars, mainly fructose and glucose. It replaces 1:1 with sugar. I have purchased mine from Costco. If you don’t want to make the dressing, any creamy bottle poppyseed dressing will do. However, I was wanting control over the calories for my dressing.

The recipe is for a single serving amount of the salad, However, it is easy to double, triple, etc for how ever many servings you need. This recipe came in on my WW Personal Points at 7 points plus 1 earned point for 1 cup non-starchy vegetables.

Here is what you need to make the

Strawberry Poppyseed Salad (Panera Copycat)

light mayo
skim milk
sugar or white granulated sugar sweetener such as Lakanto Classic monk fruit sweetener
apple cider vinegar
poppyseeds
cooked skinless boneless chicken strips or chopped Chicken (I used rotisserie chicken)
romaine lettuce
canned mandarin oranges
fresh strawberries
canned pineapple chunks
fresh blueberries
toasted pecans

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This recipe is adapted from The Pound Dropper.