Sarah Wally: Hi! I'm Sarah Wally, a registered dietitian with the Association for Dressings & Sauces. And today I'm going to teach you how to make a delicious Sedona Summer Chicken Salad.

Now the nutritional profile of your salad really depends on what ingredients you choose, so the specific vitamins and minerals, the phytonutrients, and the amount of fiber that your salad provides, is really going to change from recipe-to-recipe. So to get started today we're going to have two cups of cooked chicken that's being cubed, three-quarters of a cup of Italian salad dressing that's been divided into a quarter cup and a half cup serving. Two cups of torn leaf lettuce, one cucumber that's been peeled and thinly sliced, one yellow squash that's also been thinly sliced, two green bell peppers that have been cored and chopped, one cup of peeled baby carrots that's been sliced lengthwise, one cup of cherry tomatoes that's been halved, 115 ounce can of whole kernel corn that's been drained and a half of a cup of grated sharp potato cheese.

So to get started today we're going to take our two cups of cube-chicken into that we're going to add a quarter of a cup of our Italian dressing. We're going to mix that well and we're going to let it marinade. Now we're going to combine the remainder of our ingredients, so we have our lettuce greens, a corn, cherry tomatoes, our baby carrots and our green bell peppers, we have our cucumbers and our yellow squash, and we have our cheese, and now we have the remainder of our Italian dressing, which is a half of a cup, which we're going to add and stir together.

Now topping your favorite salad with the salad dressing can actually boost the nutritional value of your meal. So the healthy oils that are found in many salad dressings actually help your body to better observe certain nutrients, like some of the antioxidants that are found in vegetables and fruits.

Now research shows that most Americans are not meeting the recommended levels of key nutrients, but salad eaters tend to have higher intake levels of certain essential vitamins, like Vitamin C, Vitamin E, and Folie. So this salad takes about 30 minutes to prepare and serves four, and so after we plate this into four individual portions we're going to add about a half of a cup of the chicken that we've had marinating in our Italian dressing to each serving.

Now eating a salad a day, topped with your favorite dressing is an easy way to get vital nutrients into your diet, nutrients that promote good health and may help ward off disease. For more creative salad recipes please visit www.

saladaday.

org.