Spinoff on Panera Bread’s Thai Chicken Salad

Parley and I stopped at Panera Bread the other day and I grabbed their Thai Chicken Salad.  To say I loved it would be a gross understatement.  I am not a big foodie.  Don't get me wrong, I love to eat, but as long as it tastes pretty good I am happy.  I don't normally get excited about what's going in my mouth.  But this salad was different.  I kept saying, "mmmmm, this is good" "Oh heavens, this is delicous" "Wow, this is fantastic!"  You get the picture.  So tonight when the planned dinner was not doing it for me, I decided I'd try to duplicate the Panera salad.  I am now a happy and fully filled foodie!

Here's how we did ours.  (forgive the lack of technical cooking terms.  I am no pro)

I had boiled some chicken just in broth, so I threw about 4 cups of shredded chicken into a mixture of
white wine vinegar
dehydrated onions
ground ginger
a bit of brown sugar

--then I just let that marinate a couple hours until dinner time.
For the base of the salad we used:
1 1/2 Romain heads chopped
1 carrot shredded on the thickest shredder we have (how's that for techinical?)  :)
1 red bell pepper chopped chunky
1/2 cup cilantro finely chopped
1 1/2 c diced cucumber
1/2 c diced celery (could use more, it was just what we had in the fridge)

For the dressing I did:
1/4 cup water
3/4 cup white vinegar
1/2 tsp ground ginger (next time I will use more because it needed a little more kick)
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 pressed garlic clove
1 1/2 Tbsp honey
1 cup olive oil (I'll use less next time because I like a lower ratio of oil to vinegar)

Stir that all up (I had to heat mine a bit in the microwave to help incorporate the honey) then let it refrigerate.

Then at dinner we topped our salads with the chicken, raisins/craisins (we tried both ways), chow mein noodles, peanuts and the dressing. 

It was seriously good!  I am salivating just thinking about it.  I think I'm gonna go have some salad!