What to do with a cornish hen and lots of lettuce?

On this particular night our dinner had quite the evolution. This was not a "planned" dinner so to speak meaning I did not have this on my grocery list. The first part of the dinner planning started with the chicken. When I was grocery shopping I had a "blank" day later on in the week on my list that needed a meal. Whenever I have a day like this I'll either hope I find inspiration at the store or don't worry about it and figure it out closer to the day. (Or tell Patrick he's in charge that night!) As it so happened I was buying some other meats and saw some cutely packaged cornish hens. Two hens come together and I thought this would be perfect because it would provide dinner for two different nights with the two small chickens. So I threw them in the cart then wheeled around to the fresh produce. A green vegetable is always a nice side dish. I ended up with asparagus and thought roasting it would be yummy. When I left the store my plan for that dinner was going to be roasted chicken, asparagus, and a small salad with lettuce from our CSA.

While Patrick was preparing the chicken I realized he had bought lettuce, I had bought lettuce, and we had ordered 2 heads of lettuce from our CSA! What?! How did that happen... we still don't really know. We quickly knew that this was going to evolve into a meal salad dinner. Turned out the chicken and asparagus were easily adaptable for a salad meal. Read on to see how everything came together.


Patrick rubbed the cornish hen with an olive oil-herb mixture. We cooked the cornish hen according to package directions and had no trouble. After the cornish hen was done we let it rest for a few minutes. During this time we roasted the asparagus in little evoo, salt, and pepper. Once the cornish hen had cooled slightly we carved it and shredded it into bite-sized pieces. Patrick's mom had visited us the past weekend and left us with some pomegranate seeds. Now the only thing was a dressing! I browsed around the Internet a bit and found a dijon vinaigrette. I found it at vinaigretterecipe.com; you'll have fun browsing it if you're interested in making your own dressings! The dijon vinaigrette is just a combination of olive oil, red wine vinegar, dijon mustard, and salt and pepper.

Ta-da! Salad time!