My homemade take on the viral TikTok fast food salad hack, made with a kale, cabbage and lettuce base, dressed with a honey mustard vinaigrette and topped with honey and hot sauce tossed crispy chicken tenders.

Cabbage and Kale Chicken Strip Salad

If you're not a big fan of kale, stay tuned y'all. I think you'll love this, I really do! Read on.

The inspiration for this salad came from a video that passed my timeline on social media one day.

The gal shooting the video was sitting in her car in the parking lot of Chick-fil-A with a drive through order. The hack was with their Kale Crunch Salad and an add on 3-piece chicken strip meal which she tossed in the box with a packet of buffalo sauce and honey. She tore the strips with her fingers and topped her salad with them.

I thought it sounded good and since I don't have a Chick-Fil-A nearby, I got one of those well "I can make that at home" vibes y'all.

Raw shrimp, preferably Wild-caught American, peeled and deveined, passed through a milk and egg mixture, then into a seasoned cracker meal dredge and deep fried to golden brown delicious!

Cracker Meal Deep Fried Shrimp

Growing up, my Mama did not use flour on her fried seafood. She used boxed cracker meal.

If I had to guess, I'd say that once I started cooking for myself, I ventured away from using it because it can be a bit pricey and these days, even hard to find, but flour? Well, I always have that on hand.

I do prefer to use self-rising flour because it contains baking powder, which contains cornstarch, and seems to me to give a more crisp and crunchy texture than plain all-purpose flour does.

I know some folks have disagreed with me, and that's okay, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it y'all!

Crispy thin cucumber and onion slices in a more sweet than tangy vinegar and sugar dressing.

New York Deli Style Cucumber Salad

I'm gonna be honest here. I've never been a big traveler, so there's a lot I've never experienced.

I don't like flying commercial. I hate being in a car for very long.

Day trips locally? I'm all for that if I can go and get back home that same day.

Long story short. I've never stepped foot in New York, much less New York City. The only time I've traveled even close to there was to air my cookbook (#ad) on QVC!

A creamy egg salad made with grated boiled eggs, finely minced onion, mixed herbs and finely shredded Italian-style cheese, dressed with mayo and mustard and served on buttered and pan grilled bread.

Grilled Cheese Grated Egg Salad Sandwich

I have a classic egg salad that I make most of the time and I'm perfectly happy with that!

Still, I do enjoy trying new things. I mean after all, I do run a recipe website, right?

And... unlike a lot of you who manage to do everything from one of those smartphones, I do my work from a desktop computer. It opens to a Microsoft tab when I start up, where I ran across a version of this on one of the featured articles, and thought it was different and interesting enough to try!

A chicken salad made with cooked chicken, celery, green onion, cold processed refrigerated dill pickles (like Grillo's) and dressed with a quality mayonnaise.

Grillo's Dill Pickle Chicken Salad

I love a good chicken salad, and my standby is still the one I lean on the most. It's a good solid deli-style chicken salad and I love it.

Since entering this food blogging experience many, many years back though, I've tried a bunch of different ones, so when I saw Elizabeth Heiskell making this one on social, I got a little curious.

Now. Pickles are a thing I do love in my chicken salad, but I use relish or pickle cubes usually and most often I lean toward a sweet relish.

A salsa made with the best flavors of summer - bell pepper, tomatoes, cucumber, chilies, zucchini and corn - nicely seasoned and tossed with a quality creamy Italian dressing.

Summer Vegetable Salsa

Okay. Question.

Is this a salsa? You know, like meant to be eaten with chips? Or as a condiment for grilled or pan seared proteins?

Or, is it a dip, solely meant to be scooped up on a chip?

Or, is it a salad? Meant to be eaten on its own?

A perfect pasta salad for any gathering, or just because! Rotini pasta, paired with vegetables, meats and cheeses, mixed with a salad seasoning blend and dressed with a quality homemade or commercial creamy Italian dressing. Pictured here with a tuna salad wrap and pickled baby beets.

Party Pasta Salad

It's pretty easy to make a pasta salad, and you don't really need a "recipe" so to speak. You just toss some cooked pasta with favorite vegetables, sometimes some kind of protein and dress it with a favorite salad dressing and voila, you've got a pasta salad!

Of course, you may not be able to recreate that combination unless you wrote it down and that's where a recipe comes in handy.

This pasta salad is one of those that went viral on social media, though, as usual there are lots of comments from folks talking about how they "have been making this all of their lives!" 

An easy cobbler made from canned peaches and cake mix.

Cake Mix Peach Cobbler

It's a little early yet for fresh peaches, and thank goodness after a few weather-related bad years, this summer's peaches are looking to be a bumper crop!

I love fresh peaches and the past several years, I've been purchasing peaches from different orchards all across the south, just so that I could get a taste of peaches from lots of regions. It's actually rare for me to buy grocery store peaches, although I will search out some regional peaches at our farmer's markets at peak season.

In the meantime, thank goodness for frozen and canned peaches!

This barbecue sauce made with classic Coca-Cola, is a sweet and tangy finish for all of your smoke and grill cooks as well as a delicious condiment for those burgers.

Coca-Cola BBQ Sauce

Yep. Recipes with Coca-Cola is a thing in the South!

I mean, after all, it is an Atlanta product. The company has been headquartered there since its founding in 1892.

Cola has found its way to recipes from marinades and sauces, to pulled pork, ribs, beans and even desserts and if you want the real deal, the bottled version is still the best in my humble opinion, even better when you have access to cane sugar based Mexican Coke.

Thick cut, bone-in pork chops, marinated in a seasoned oil and vinegar mix and grilled. Pictured here with green peas and sweet potato casserole.

Marinated Grilled Pork Chops

I had these two beautiful bone-in pork chops in the freezer just waiting to do something with!

There were four in the pack originally but since since there are only two of us at home, I used them two at a time. First, to make those fabulous stuffed chops again and I just froze the remaining two for another time.

I thought that I'd do a simple marinade and grill the remaining two.